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&  Comspotttieiue 

BETWEEN 

JOHN   STERLING 

AND 

RALPH   WALDO    EMERSON 


WITH   A   SKETCH   OF 
STERLING'S  LIFE 

BY 

EDWARD   WALDO    EMERSON 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

($bt  ffitoetfibe 

1897 


COPYRIGHT,  1897,  BY  EDWARD  WALDO  EMBRSON 
ALL  RIGHTS   RESERVED 


PREFATORY  NOTE 


IT  has  seemed  to  me  proper  to  intro 
duce  these  letters  with  a  short  account 
of  Sterling  and  his  work,  believing  that 
neither  Carlyle's  "  Life  of  Sterling"  nor 
Archdeacon  Hare's  "  Memoir  "  are  read 
by  many  persons  nowadays,  and  Ster 
ling's  own  works  are  difficult  to  obtain. 

Through  the  kind  permission  of  Colo 
nel  John  Barton  Sterling  of  London  I  am 
enabled  to  use  his  father's  letters. 

EDWARD  W.  EMERSON. 

CONCORD,  September,  1897. 


STERLING  AND    EMERSON 


Then  smiled  King  Elf  and  answered, '  A  long  way  wilt 

thou  ride 

To  where  unpeace  and  trouble  and  grief s  of  the  soul  abide, 
Yea,  unto  the  death  at  last,  — yet  surely  shalt  thou  win 
The  help  of  many  people,  so  have  thy  way  herein. 
Forsooth  no  more  may  we  hold  thee  than  the  hazel-copse 

may  hold 

The  sun  of  the  early  morning  which  turneth  it  all  to  gold.1 
SIGURD  THE  VOLSUNG,  WILLIAM  MORRIS. 


JOHN   STERLING 

HOW  much  the  world  owes,  how  lit 
tle  it  credits,  to  the  Illuminators. 
King  Admetus  had  one  of  these  nomi 
nally  tending  his  herds  for  a  time,  but 
who  did  more  than  this  for  him  ;  and  the 
story  has  been  remembered  the  better 
because  it  has  been  the  fortune  of  many 
men  to  fall  in  with  one  of  the  herdsman's 
descendants.  However  dark  the  times 
and  unpromising  the  place,  these  sons  of 
the  morning  will  appear,  and  their  bright 
parentage  shows  through  life,  for  the 
years  let  them  alone.  In  Rome  in  her 
decline  Juvenal  found  this  saving  rem 
nant,  and  rightly  told  their  lineage  in  the 
verses, 

"  Juvenes  queis  arte  benigna 
E.t  meliore  luto  finxit  praecordia  Titan." 

Blest  youths,  though  few,  whose  hearts  the  God  of  Day 
Fashioned  with  loving  hand  and  from  a  nobler  clay. 
3 


JOHN   STERLING 

Where  they  have  come,  they  have  gilded 
the  day  for  those  around,  and  warmed 
their  hearts,  and  made  the  dim  way  plain ; 
and  when  they  suddenly  passed,  a  bright 
twilight  has  remained,  and  the  voice  has 
rung  for  life  in  the  ears  that  once  knew 
it.  And  because  the  twilight  does  not 
last,  and  the  echo  perishes  with  the  ears 
that  heard  it,  and  the  gain  of  these  lives 
is  of  a  kind  less  easily  pointed  out  to  the 
common  eye  than  if  it  had  taken  form 
in  "  goods,"  or  inventions,  or  institutions, 
or  even  laurels,  men  often  lament  and 
count  such  lives  as  lost. 

In  presenting  the  words  of  good  cheer 
that  passed  between  John  Sterling,  the 
poet,  and  a  friend,  never  seen,  beyond 
the  ocean,  I  wish  to  urge  that  here  was 
one  whose  nobility  and  sympathy  illumi 
nated  in  his  short  day  the  lives  of  his 
friends ;  and  though  he  died  before  his 
noon,  leaving  little  lasting  work,  yet  was 
not  the  light  lost,  for  the  seemingly  more 
4 


JOHN   STERLING 

enduring  work  of  his  friends  was  done  in 
a  measure  in  its  rays. 

"Poor  Sterling,"  —  such  is  the  ever 
recurring  burden  of  Carlyle's  tribute  to 
his  friend,  which  he  seems  to  have  been 
pricked  into  writing  largely  because  Ster 
ling's  other  loyal  friend  and  biographer, 
Archdeacon  Hare,  who  had  loved  and 
labored  with  him  in  the  Church  of  Eng 
land,  deplored  overmuch  his  throwing  off 
its  rule  and  vestments.  Though  Carlyle 
has  no  sympathy  for  Sterling's  knightly 
efforts  to  help  the  exile  and  the  slave, 
and  for  his  apostolic  labors  among  the 
poor  of  England,  scouts  his  verses  and 
makes  light  of  his  essays  and  romance, 
and  ever  chafes  because  this  fine  courser 
was  not  a  mighty  dray-horse  like  himself, 
—  yes,  sad  and  soured  by  physical  ail 
ments,  he  more  than  half  blamed  his 
brave  friend  for  having  the  cruel  and 
long  disease  through  which  he  worked, 
even  to  his  censor's  admiration,  —  yet,  in 
5 


JOHN   STERLING 

spite  of  all,  Carlyle's  Life  of  Sterling 
shows  in  every  page  that  this  man's  short, 
brave  course  lifted  and  illuminated  all 
about  him,  even  that  weary  and  sad-eyed 
Jeremiah  himself  as  he  sat  apart  and 
prophesied  and  lamented.  One  recoils 
at  much  of  Carlyle's  expression  in  this 
work,  but,  with  all  its  blemish  of  pity 
and  Philistinism  and  pessimism,  it  stands 
remarkable,  a  monument  built  by  such 
hands,  —  I  will  not  say  planned  by  such 
a  mind,  for  the  mind  protested ;  but 
nevertheless  the  hands,  obedient  to  the 
spirit,  built  it  with  the  best  they  could 
bring  in  gratitude  to  helpful  love  whose 
sunlight  had  reached  an  imprisoned  soul. 
John  Sterling  died  half  a  century  ago. 
Little  of  what  he  wrote  remains.  His 
fine  Stafford,  a  Tragedy,  is  now  hard 
to  obtain,  and  few  people  even  know 
Daedalus,  the  best  of  his  poems.  His 
work  is  noble  in  thought  and  often  in  ex 
pression,  as  befitted  a  man  who  bravely 
turned  away  from  his  Church,  with  all  it 
6 


JOHN   STERLING 

then  meant  of  opportunity  and  vantage- 
ground,  saying  simply  to  his  pleading 
friends,  "No,  I  cannot  lie  for  God." 

I  will  briefly  recall  the  few  outward 
events  of  Sterling's  life.  Born  in  1806, 
in  the  Island  of  Bute,  of  gentle  Scotch 
blood  warmed  and  spiced  by  the  sojourn 
of  his  immediate  forerunners  in  Ireland, 
and  his  first  years  passed  in  Gaelic  and 
Cymrian  lands,  it  is  no  wonder  that  the 
growth  of  the  young  mind  and  spirit  was 
determined  rather  in  the  direction  of  bold 
and  free  and  fine  imagination  than  along 
paths  of  unremitting  and  faithful  toil. 
Moreover,  he  had  that  quick  sympathy 
and  entire  generosity  which,  as  prompt 
ing  to  turn  aside  for  others'  interests, 
do  not  favor  the  concentration  of  effort. 
These  and  the  other  good  traits  of  the 
Celtic  races,  their  unquestioning  courage, 
loyalty,  gayety,  eloquence,  gave  Sterling 
his  brilliancy,  which  was  saved  from  the 
faults  that  usually  go  with  the  artistic 
temperament  by  a  delicate  conscience 
7 


JOHN   STERLING 

and  the  controlling  moral  sense  and  prin 
ciple,  the  best  Saxon  heritage. 

He  did  not  undergo  the  time-honored 
and  Philistine  methods  of  the  great  pub 
lic  schools,  so  prized  as  a  foundation  of 
manhood  and  grammar  for  an  English 
gentleman.  He  did  not  need  that  rude 
schooling ;  the  fire  and  manhood  were 
there,  and  he  took  to  letters  by  nature. 
He  studied  with  various  tutors,  and  be 
came  a  student  at  Cambridge.  Here 
he  was  a  light  in  the  brightest  under 
graduate  society  of  his  day,  among  whom 
were  men  destined  to  impress  their  gen 
eration.  The  best  of  these  —  Frederick 
Maurice,  John  Trench,  John  Kemble, 
Richard  Monckton  Milnes,  Charles  Bul- 
ler,  and  others  —  were  his  friends.  He 
did  not  value  the  English  university  as  it 
was  in  his  day. 

After  leaving  the  university,  and  after 
some  false  starts  like  an  attempt  at  read 
ing  law  and  a  temporary  secretaryship  of 
a  sort  of  politico-commercial  association, 
8 


JOHN   STERLING 

he  soon  came  to  his  natural  destiny,  a 
literary  life,  and  of  course  gravitated  to 
London,  where  his  father,  a  man  of  spirit 
and  ability,  was  already  a  power  in  the 
Times  newspaper. 

Sterling  joined  with  Maurice  in  con 
ducting  The  Athenceum.  Its  high  tone 
was  distinctive  while  Sterling  was  con 
nected  with  it,  says  Archdeacon  Hare ; 
and  of  his  literary  first-fruits,  Essays 
and  Tales,  many  of  them  cast  in  a 
Greek  mould,  even  Carlyle,  mainly  con 
temptuous  of  anything  artistic,  has  to 
say  that  they  are  "singularly  beautiful 
and  attractive."  "  Everywhere  the  point 
of  view  adopted  is  a  high  and  noble  one, 
and  the  result  worked  out  a  result  to  be 
sympathized  with,  and  accepted  as  far 
as  it  will  go." 

The  outward  life  among  the  highest 
literary  society  in  London,  in  which  his 
fine,  spirited  personality  soon  gave  him 
prominence,  was  much  to  his  taste,  but 
meanwhile  his  inner  life  was  growing 
9 


JOHN   STERLING 

richer  with  the  days.  The  simple  nobil 
ity  of  Arnold,  the  Master  of  Rugby,  had 
early  interested  him ;  even  in 

"  Streaming  London's  central  roar  " 

the  voice  of  Wordsworth  from  the  West 
moreland  hills  reached  him,  created  a 
calm,  and  brought  happiness ;  above  all, 
Coleridge,  incomprehensible  save  to  a 
few,  and  now  growing  dim  in  age,  but 
to  Sterling's  eager  soul  illuminating  the 
mists  in  which  he  lived,  became  a  power 
in  his  life.  Indeed,  of  some  of  his  own 
Athenaeum  papers  Sterling  modestly 
wrote  that  he  was  "  but  a  patch  of  sand 
to  receive  and  retain  the  Master's  foot 
print."  The  gospel  of  the  low  place  of 
the  understanding,  and  of  faith  as  the 
highest  reason,  lighted  on  their  way  the 
disciples  of  this  high  priest  strangely 
arisen  in  the  England  of  that  day. 

Sterling's  youthful  chivalry  led  him  to 

befriend  and  help  the  Spanish  political 

refugees,  of  whom  a  numerous  band  were 

in   London.      Among   others,   he   inter- 

10 


JOHN    STERLING 

ested  in  this  cause  an  adventurous  young 
kinsman,  lately  resigned  from  the  army, 
and  keen  for  some  daring  enterprise, 
and,  with  the  means  and  zeal  which  this 
ally  brought,  a  descent  on  the  coast  of 
Spain,  to  raise  the  revolutionary  stand 
ard  there,  was  planned.  Sterling  for 
warded  this  scheme  as  he  could,  and 
meant  personally  to  share  in  it,  but  was 
dissuaded  because  of  ill  health  and  his 
recent  engagement  of  marriage.  The 
vessel  was  seized  at  the  point  of  rendez 
vous  on  the  Thames,  the  day  before  it 
was  to  sail,  with  Sterling  on  board  help 
ing  in  the  preparations.  He  escaped 
with  cool  audacity,  warned  the  adventur 
ers,  saved  them  from  capture,  and  got 
the  now  sorely  crippled  and  disarmed  ex 
pedition  otherwise  started.  But  disaster 
dogged  it,  and  after  some  tedious  and  in 
effectual  attempts  to  promote  a  rising, 
General  Torrijos  and  his  helpers,  includ 
ing  Sterling's  young  relative,  were  cap 
tured,  and  summarily  shot  on  the  plaza 
ii 


JOHN   STERLING 

of  Malaga.  Because  he  had  aided  the 
rash  venture,  but  had  not  shared  its  dan 
gers,  the  blow  was  almost  overwhelming 
to  a  man  of  Sterling's  high  honor,  and  it 
was  a  subject  that  could  never  be  spoken 
of  in  his  presence. 

Before  the  final  blow  came,  he  had 
gone,  because  of  alarming  lung  threaten- 
ings,  to  assume  the  care  of  an  inherited 
family  property  in  the  Isle  of  St.  Vin 
cent,  in  the  West  Indies,  carrying  his 
young  wife  with  him.  There  he  met 
slavery,  and,  sharing  the  responsibility 
for  it,  began  to  consider,  with  both  con 
science  and  common  sense,  what  could 
be  done  for  the  poor  degraded  bonds 
men  ;  but  his  residence  there  was  short, 
only  fifteen  months,  and  his  improved 
health  seemed  to  warrant  an  ending  of 
this  exile,  so  he  returned  to  England  in 
1832.  Though  his  genius  called  him  to 
other  works  than  professed  philanthropy, 
and  these  and  all  of  his  works  had  to  be 
done  as  they  might  with  the  sword  of 
12 


JOHN    STERLING 

Azrael  hanging  over  him,  —  wounding 
him  grievously  many  times  before  its 
final  fall,  —  he  did  not  forget  the  slaves, 
and  hoped  he  might  yet  serve  their 
cause. 

To  introduce  a  contrast  which  may  be 
interesting,  I  quote  Carlyle's  views  on 
this  hope  of  Sterling's  :  — 

"During  the  summer  of  1832  I  find 
traces  of  attempts  towards  anti-slavery 
philanthropy  ;  shadows  of  extensive 
schemes  in  that  direction ;  half-desper 
ate  outlooks,  it  is  likely,  towards  the 
refuge  of  philanthropism  as  a  new  chi 
valry  of  life.  These  took  no  serious 
hold  of  so  clear  an  intellect,  but  they 
hovered  now  and  afterwards  as  day 
dreams  when  life  otherwise  was  shorn 
of  aim  :  mirages  in  the  desert,  which 
are  found  not  to  be  lakes  when  you  put 
your  bucket  into  them.  .  .  .  The  so 
journ  at  St.  Vincent's  was  not  to  last 
much  longer.  Perhaps  one  might  get 
some  scheme  raised  into  life  in  Down- 
is 


JOHN    STERLING 

ing  Street  for  universal  education  of  the 
blacks  preparatory  to  emancipating  them. 
There  were  a  noble  work  for  a  man  !  " 

February,  1835.  "We  talked  rapidly 
of  various  unmemorable  things.  I  re 
member  coming  on  the  negroes,  and 
noticing  that  Sterling's  notions  on  the 
Anti-slavery  question  had  not  advanced 
into  the  stage  of  mine.  In  reference  to 
the  question  whether  an  '  engagement  for 
life '  on  just  terms  between  parties  who 
are  fixed  in  the  character  of  master  and 
servant,  as  the  whites  and  negroes  are,  is 
not  really  better  than  one  from  day  to 
day,  he  said  with  a  kindly  jeer,  '  I  would 
have  the  negroes  themselves  consulted 
as  to  that/  and  would  not  in  the  least 
believe  that  the  negroes  were  by  no 
means  final  or  perfect  judges  of  it.  His 
address,  I  perceived,  was  abrupt,  uncere 
monious,  etc.,"  — as  might  have  been  im 
agined. 

Once  more  at  home  in  England,  and 
rejoicing  in  this,  and  yet  more  in  the 
14 


JOHN    STERLING 

blessing  of  wife  and  child,  Sterling,  now 
maturing  with  richer  experience,  desiring 
to  serve  his  kind,  and  with  new  hope  and 
faith,  essayed  his  hand  in  a  thoughtful 
novel,  Arthur  Coningsby,  in  which  he 
tried  to  show  that  the  Church  might 
still  have  life  and  help  hidden  under  its 
externals.  In  this  serious  frame  of  mind 
he  chanced  to  meet  his  friend,  Julius 
Hare,  a  good  man  and  a  servant  of  the 
Lord  in  the  Church  of  England,  who 
well  knew  the  nobility  that  lay  in  Ster 
ling;  and  soon  after  he  became  Hare's 
curate  at  Herstmonceux,  in  Sussex. 

Into  the  high  and  the  lowly  duties  of 
his  calling  Sterling  threw  himself  with 
the  zeal  of  the  loved  disciple,  during  the 
few  months  that  his  health  allowed  him 
to  labor ;  though  the  zealous  Paul  was 
rather  his  model,  he  said,  and  the  village 
cottages  were  to  be  to  him  his  Derbe 
and  Lystra  and  Ephesus,  a  place  where 
he  would  bend  his  whole  being,  and 
spend  his  heart  for  the  conversion,  puri- 
15 


JOHN    STERLING 

fication,  elevation,  of  the  humble  souls 
therein.  In  that  time  he  found  much 
happiness,  and  blessings  followed  his 
steps  in  the  village.  But  his  physicians 
told  him  that  he  could  not  do  this  work 
and  live,  so  with  much  regret  he  left  the 
post  in  which  he  had  given  such  promise 
of  being  helpful.  It  was  a  station  on 
his  journey,  a  phase  in  his  life ;  but  he 
passed  on,  and  soon  his  growing  spirit 
found  itself  cramped  by  walls  built  for 
men  of  other  centuries  and  other  stat 
ure.  Yet  for  the  remaining  years  of  his 
maimed  and  interrupted  life  he  was  a 
noble  soldier  of  the  Church  militant  and 
universal,  a  helper  and  a  light. 

Through  ten  years,  with  his  life  in  his 
hands,  under  continual  marching  orders, 
cruelly  separating  him  from  his  loved 
and  loyal  wife  and  little  children,  to  Ma 
deira,  Bordeaux,  the  southern  towns  of 
England,  and  finally  the  Isle  of  Wight, 
he  never  lost  courage  or  faith,  and  worked 
while  yet  there  was  day  for  him.  And 
16 


JOHN    STERLING 

though  long  disease  wore  out  the  body? 
it  could  never  touch  his  soul. 


Sterling  and  Emerson  never  met  face 
to  face,  but  there  was  so  strong  a  like 
ness  in  some  part  of  their  lives  —  both 
the  events  and  the  spiritual  experience 
and  growth  —  that  their  friendship 
seemed  ordained  above.  Both  men, 
born  with  a  commanding  call  to  letters ; 
brought  under  the  awakening  influences 
that  moved  England,  Old  and  New,  in 
their  generation  ;  helped  first  by  Cole 
ridge  and  charmed  by  Wordsworth,  ear 
nestly  hoped  to  serve  their  fellow  men 
by  living  work  in  the  Church  in  which 
they  found  themselves,  though  it  seemed 
well-nigh  lifeless  then.  Both,  after  a 
short  service,  found  their  growth  resisted 
by  the  walls  around  them,  and  at  once 
passed  fearlessly  out  of  the  Church  par 
tial  to  be  workers  in  the  Church  univer 
sal.  Disease  added  its  burden  to  each 
at  this  time,  and  was  bravely  borne. 
17 


JOHN    STERLING 

The  words  of  Carlyle  came  to  them, 
and  moved  them  so  strongly  that  each 
stretched  a  joyful  and  grateful  hand  to 
him  at  a  time  when  it  seemed  as  if  none 
heeded ;  and  this  their  service  to  his  soul 
bound  him  for  life  to  them,  though  his 
sad  and  stormy  spirit  chafed  at  their 
singing  and  chided  their  hope.  Brought 
into  relation  with  each  other  by  him, 
they  met  in  their  honor  for  him,  and  in 
that  other  part  of  their  lives  to  which  he 
was  deaf  and  blind,  —  their  yearning  to 
express  their  respective  messages  in  last 
ing  verse ;  and  in  this  especially,  in  the 
five  short  years  of  their  friendship,  their 
hands,  held  out  across  the  sea  to  each 
other,  gave  to  both  happiness  and  help. 

In  Mr.  Emerson's  journal  for  the  year 
1843  is  written  the  following  pleasant 
account  of  the  coming  together,  along 
lines  of  sympathy,  of  Sterling's  life  and 
his  own :  — 

"  In  Roxbury,  in  1825,  I  read  Cotton's 
18 


JOHN    STERLING 

translation  of  Montaigne.  It  seemed  to 
me  as  if  I  had  written  the  book  myself 
in  some  former  life,  so  sincerely  it  spoke 
my  thought  and  experience.  No  book 
before  or  since  was  ever  so  much  to  me 
as  that.  How  I  delighted  afterwards  in 
reading  Cotton's  dedication  to  Halifax, 
and  the  reply  of  Halifax,  which  seemed 
no  words  of  course,  but  genuine  suf 
frages.  Afterwards  I  went  to  Paris  in 
1833,  and  to  the  Pere  la  Chaise  and 

stumbled  on  the  tomb  of j1  who,  said 

the  stone,  formed  himself  to  virtue  on 
the  Essays  of  Montaigne.  Afterwards, 
John  Sterling  wrote  a  loving  criticism  on 
Montaigne  in  the  Westminster  Revieiv, 
with  a  j  ournal  of  his  own  pilgrimage  to 
Montaigne's  estate  and  chateau ;  and  soon 
after  Carlyle  writes  me  word  that  this 

1  Left  blank  in  the  journal,  but  in  his  volume  Represen 
tative  Men,  in  the  chapter  "  Montaigne,  or  the  Skeptic,"  he 
writes  :  "  In  the  Pere  la  Chaise  I  came  to  the  tomb  of  Au- 
guste  Collignon,  who  died  in  1830,  aged  sixty -eight  years, 
and  who,  said  the  monument,  '  lived  to  do  right  and  had 
formed  himself  to  virtue  on  the  Essays  of  Montaigne.'  " 

19 


JOHN   STERLING 

same  lover  of  Montaigne  is  a  lover  of 
me.  Now  I  have  been  introducing  to 
his  genius  two  of  my  friends,  James  and 
Tappan,  who  both  warm  to  him  as  to 
their  brother.  So  true  is  S.  G.  W.'s 
saying  that  all  whom  he  knew,  met." 

Here  is  the  passage  in  the  letter  of 
Carlyle  above  alluded  to,  written  from 
Chelsea,  on  the  8th  of  December,  1837  : 

"  There  is  a  man  here  called  John 
Sterling  (Reverend  John  of  the  Church 
of  England  too),  whom  I  love  better  than 
anybody  I  have  met  with,  since  a  certain 
sky-messenger  alighted  to  me  at  Craigen- 
puttock,  and  vanished  in  the  Blue  again. 
This  Sterling  has  written  ;  but  what  is 
far  better,  he  has  lived,  he  is  alive. 
Across  several  unsuitable  wrappages,  of 
Church- of -Englandism  and  others,  my 
heart  loves  the  man.  He  is  one,  and  the 
best,  of  a  small  class  extant  here,  who, 
nigh  drowning  in  a  black  wreck  of  Infi 
delity  (lighted  up  by  some  glare  of  Radi 
calism  only,  now  growing  dim,  too)  and 

20 


JOHN    STERLING 

about  to  perish,  saved  themselves  into  a 
Coleridgian  Shovel-hattedness,  or  deter 
mination  to  preach,  to  preach  peace,  were 
it  only  the  spent  echo  of  a  peace  once 
preached.  He  is  still  only  about  thirty  ; 
young ;  and  I  think  will  shed  the  shovel- 
hat  yet,  perhaps.  Do  you  ever  read 
Blackwood?  This  John  Sterling  is  the 
'New  Contributor '  whom  Wilson  makes 
such  a  rout  about,  in  the  November  and 
prior  month :  "  Crystals  from  a  Cavern, 
etc.,"  which  it  is  well  worth  your  while 
to  see.  Well,  and  what  then,  cry  you? 
Why,  then,  this  John  Sterling  has  fallen 
overhead  in  love  with  a  certain  Waldo 
Emerson,  —  that  is  all.  He  saw  the  little 
Book  Nature  lying  here ;  and,  across  a 
whole  silva  silvarum  of  prejudices,  dis 
cerned  what  was  in  it ;  took  it  to  his 
heart,  —  and  indeed  into  his  pocket  ;  and 
has  carried  it  off  to  Madeira  with  him, 
whither,  unhappily  (though  now  with 
good  hope  and  expectation),  the  Doctors 
have  ordered  him.  This  is  the  small 

21 


JOHN    STERLING 

piece  of  pleasant  news  :  that  two  sky- 
messengers  (such  they  were  both  of  them 
to  me)  have  met  and  recognized  each 
other  ;  and  by  God's  blessing  there  shall 
one  day  be  a  trio  of  us;  call  you  that 
nothing  ? " 

The  news  of  this  new  friend  and  fel 
low  worker  was  joyfully  welcomed  by 
Emerson  in  his  answer.  After  reading 
the  prose  and  verse  in  Blackwood,  he 
says,  "  I  saw  that  my  man  had  a  head 
and  a  heart,  and  spent  an  hour  or  two 
very  happily  in  spelling  his  biography 
out  of  his  own  hand,  a  species  of  palmis 
try  in  which  I  have  a  perfect  reliance." 
The  letters  to  Carlyle  written  during  the 
next  year  and  a  half  tell  of  his  growing 
interest  in  the  man  and  his  writings. 

Carlyle' s  letter  from  Ecclefechan  in 
September,  1839,  shows  that  the  fated 
friends  are  drawing  near  to  one  another  : 

"  God  speed  you,  my  Brother.  I  hope 
all  good  things  of  you ;  and  wonder 
whether,  like  Phoebus  Apollo,  you  are 

22 


JOHN    STERLING 

destined  to  be  a  youth  forever.  Sterling 
will  be  right  glad  to  hear  your  praises  ; 
not  unmerited,  for  he  is  a  man  among 
millions,  that  John  of  mine,  though  his 
perpetual-mobility  wears  me  out  at  times. 
Did  he  ever  write  to  you  ?  His  latest 
speculation  was  that  he  should  and 
would ;  but  I  fancy  it  is  among  the 
clouds  again.  I  heard  from  him  the 
other  day,  out  of  Welsh  villages  where 
he  passed  his  boyhood,  etc.,  all  in  a  flow 
of  'lyrical  recognition,'  hope,  faith,  and 
sanguine  unrest ;  I  have  even  some 
thoughts  of  returning  by  Bristol  (in  a 
week  or  so,  that  must  be),  and  seeing 
him.  The  dog  has  been  reviewing  me, 
he  says,  and  it  is  coming  out  in  the  next 
Westminster!  He  hates  terribly  my 
doctrine  of  *  Silence!  " 

Emerson  had  sent  to  Sterling  at  vari 
ous  times,  through  the  hands  of  their 
friend  Carlyle,  his  orations,  The  Ameri 
can  Scholar  and  Literary  Ethics,  de 
livered  respectively  before  the  Phi  Beta 
23 


JOHN    STERLING 

Kappa  Society  at  Harvard  University, 
August  31,  1837,  and  the  literary  socie 
ties  at  Dartmouth  College,  July  24,  1838  ; 
and  probably  also  his  Address  to  the 
Senior  Class  at  the  Divinity  School  at 
Cambridge.  These  cumulative  gifts 
drew  from  Sterling  the  first  letter  of  a 
series  which,  through  the  courtesy  of 
Colonel  John  Barton  Sterling  of  London, 
I  am  permitted  to  publish,  together  with 
Emerson's  letters  in  reply. 
24 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

I.    STERLING  TO  EMERSON. 

CLIFTON,  September  30,  1839. 

MY  DEAR  SIR,  —  It  is  a  horrible  effort 
to  do  at  last  what  one  ought  to  have 
done  long  ago,  were  it  not  still  more 
horrible  to  postpone  it  longer.  But  hav 
ing  a  conscience,  or  something  nameless 
that  does  the  work  of  one,  I  feel  it  some 
consolation  that  I  have  wronged  myself 
most  by  my  silence,  and  especially  if  I 
have  let  you  suppose  me  insensible  to 
the  beauty  and  worth  of  the  discourses 
you  sent  me,  and  to  the  still  more  valua 
ble  kindness  which  led  you  to  favour  me 
with  them.  Unhappily,  I  am  a  man  of  ill 
health  and  many  petty  concerns,  of  much 
locomotion  and  infinite  laziness  and  pro 
crastination  ;  and  though  my  failures  to 
wards  you  are  infinite,  they  are,  if  pos- 

25 

? 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

sible,  more  than  infinite  to  my  other 
friends,  —  not  better,  but  of  longer 
standing,  and  whose  claims  have  there 
fore  increased  at  compound  interest  to 
be  still  more  serious  than  yours.  One  of 
the  worst  results  of  my  neglect  is  that  I 
can  no  longer  offer  you,  in  return  for 
your  books,  the  first  vivid  impressions 
which  they  made  on  me.  I  shall  only 
now  say  that  I  have  read  very,  very  little 
modern  English  writing  that  has  struck 
and  pleased  me  so  much ;  among  recent 
productions,  almost  only  those  of  our 
friend  Carlyle,  whose  shaggy-browed  and 
deep-eyed  thoughts  have  often  a  likeness 
to  yours  which  is  very  attractive  and 
impressive,  neither  evidently  being  the 
double  of  the  other.  You  must  be  glad 
to  find  him  so  rapidly  and  strongly  rising 
into  fame  and  authority  among  us.  It  is 
evident  to  me  that  his  suggestions  work 
more  deeply  into  the  minds  of  men  in 
this  country  than  those  of  any  living 
man  :  work,  not  mining  to  draw  forth 
26 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

riches,  but  tunnelling  to  carry  inwards 
the  light  and  air  of  the  region  from  which 
he  starts.  I  rejoice  to  learn  from  him 
that  you  are  about  to  publish  something 
more  considerable,  at  least  in  bulk,  than 
what  I  have  hitherto  seen  of  yours.  I 
trust  you  will  long  continue  to  diffuse, 
by  your  example  as  well  as  doctrine,  the 
knowledge  that  the  Sun  and  Earth  and 
Plato  and  Shakespeare  are  what  they 
are  by  working  each  in  his  vocation; 
and  that  we  can  be  anything  better 
than  mountebanks  living,  and  scarecrows 
dead,  only  by  doing  so  likewise.  For 
my  better  assurance  of  this  truth,  as  well 
as  for  much  and  cordial  kindness,  I  shall 
always  remain  your  debtor,  and  also, 
Most  sincerely  yours, 

JOHN  STERLING. 

II.    EMERSON   TO   STERLING. 

CONCORD,  MASS.,  29^  May,  1840. 

MY  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  have  trusted  your 
magnanimity  to  a  good  extent  in  neglect- 

27 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

ing  to  acknowledge  your  letter,  received 
in  the  winter,  which  gave  me  great  joy, 
and  more  lately  your  volume  of  poems, 
which  I  have  had  for  some  weeks.  But 
I  am  a  worshipper  of  Friendship,  and 
cannot  find  any  other  good  equal  to  it. 
As  soon  as  any  man  pronounces  the 
words  which  approve  him  fit  for  that 
great  office,  I  make  no  haste :  he  is  holy ; 
let  me  be  holy  also  ;  our  relations  are 
eternal ;  why  should  we  count  days  and 
weeks  ?  I  had  this  feeling  in  reading 
your  paper  on  Carlyle,  in  which  I  ad 
mired  the  rare  behaviour,  with  far  less 
heed  the  things  said;  these  were  opin 
ions,  but  the  tone  was  the  man.1  But  I 
owe  to  you  also  the  ordinary  debts  we 

1  In  writing  to  Carlyle  himself  Emerson  said,  "  I  de 
lighted  in  the  spirit  of  that  paper,  —  loving  you  so  well, 
and  accusing  you  so  conscientiously." 

In  Carlyle's  Life  of  Sterling,  Part  II.  Cap.  ii.,  it  is  hard 
to  tell  which  to  admire  more,  Sterling's  just  criticism, 
so  bravely  yet  kindly  expressed,  of  Carlyle's  (Teufels- 
drockh's)  attitude  to  the  universe,  or  the  simple  and  friendly 
way  in  which  Carlyle  presents  it,  uncombated,  to  his  read 
ers. 

28 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

incur  to  art.  I  have  read  these  poems, 
and  those,  still  more  recent,  in  Black- 
wood,  with  great  pleasure.  The  ballad  of 
Alfred,1  delighted  me  when  I  first  read 
it,  but  I  read  it  so  often  to  my  friends 
that  I  discovered  that  the  last  verses 
were  not  equal  to  the  rest.  Shall  I  gos 
sip  on  and  tell  you  that  the  two  lines, 

"  Still  lives  the  song  though  Regnar  dies  ! 
Fill  high  your  cups  again," 

rung  for  a  long  time  in  my  ear,  and  had 
a  kind  of  witchcraft  for  my  fancy  ?  I 
confess  I  am  a  little  subject  to  these 
aberrations.  The  Sexton's  Daughter  is 
a  gift  to  us  all,  and  I  hear  allusions  to 
it  and  quotations  from  it  passing  into 
common  speech,  which  must  needs  grat 
ify  you.  My  wife  insists  that  I  shall 
tell  you  that  she  rejoices  greatly  that 
the  man  is  in  the  world  who  wrote  this 
poem.  The  Aphrodite  is  very  agreeable 
to  me,  and  I  was  sorry  to  miss  the  Sap- 

1  Alfred  the  Harper,  included  later  in  Emerson's  Par 
nassus. 

29 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

pho  from  the  Onyx  Ring.  I  believe 
I  do  not  set  an  equal  value  on  all  the 
pieces,  yet  I  must  count  him  happy  who 
has  this  delirious  music  in  his  brain,  who 
can  strike  the  chords  of  Rhyme  with  a 
brave  and  true  stroke ;  for  thus  only  do 
words  mount  to  their  right  greatness, 
and  airy  syllables  initiate  us  into  the  har 
monies  and  secrets  of  universal  nature. 
I  am  naturally  keenly  susceptible  of  the 
pleasures  of  rhythm,  and  cannot  believe 
but  that  one  day  —  I  ask  not  where  or 
when  —  I  shall  attain  to  the  speech  of 
this  splendid  dialect,  so  ardent  is  my 
wish  ;  and  these  wishes,  I  suppose,  are 
ever  only  the  buds  of  power  ;  but  up  to 
this  hour  I  have  never  had  a  true  suc 
cess  in  such  attempts.  My  joy  in  any 
other  man's  success  is  unmixed.  I  wish 
you  may  proceed  to  bolder,  to  the  best 
and  grandest  melodies  whereof  your  heart 
has  dreamed.  I  hear  with  some  anxiety 
of  your  ill  health  and  repeated  voyages. 
30 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

Yet  Carlyle  tells  me  that  you  are  not  in 
danger.  We  shall  learn  one  day  how  to 
prevent  these  perils  of  disease,  or  to  look 
at  them  with  the  serenity  of  insight.  It 
seems  to  me  that  so  great  a  task  is  im 
posed  on  the  young  men  of  this  genera 
tion  that  life  and  health  have  a  new  value. 
The  problems  of  reform  are  losing  their 
local  and  sectarian  character,  and  becom 
ing  generous,  profound,  and  poetic.  If, 
as  would  seem,  you  are  theoretically  as 
well  as  actually  somewhat  a  traveller,  I 
wish  America  might  attract  you.  The 
way  is  shorter  every  year,  and  the  object 
more  worthy.  There  are  three  or  four 
persons  in  this  country  whom  I  could 
heartily  wish  to  show  to  three  or  four 
persons  in  yours,  and  when  I  shall  ar 
range  any  such  interviews  under  my  own 
roof  I  shall  be  proud  and  happy. 
Your  affectionate  servant, 

R.  WALDO  EMERSON. 
31 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

III.     STERLING   TO   EMERSON. 

CLIFTON  NEAR  BRISTOL,  July  18,  1840. 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  Your  cordial  let 
ter  is  the  pleasantest  of  transatlantic 
greetings,  and  reminds  me  of  the  de 
light  with  which  Columbus  breathed  the 
air  and  saw  the  flowers  of  his  New 
World,  which,  though  I  have  not  discov 
ered  either  it  or  anything,  salutes  me 
through  you  as  kindly  as  if  I  too  had 
launched  caravels  and  lighted  on  new 
Indies.  And  so,  in  a  sense,  I  have. 
Treasures  and  spice  islands  of  good  will 
and  sympathy  blow  their  airs  to  me  from 
your  dim  poetic  distance.  In  fancy  I 
ride  the  winged  horse  you  send  me,  to 
visit  you  in  return,  and  though  prosaic 
and  hodiernal  here,  dream  that  I  live  an 
endless  life  of  song  and  true  friendly 
communion  on  the  other  side  of  the 
great  water.  In  truth,  literature  has  pro 
cured  not  one  other  such  gratification  as 
your  letter  gives  me.  Every  other  friend 
32 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

I  have — and  I  am  not  unfurnished  with 
good  and  wise  ones  —  I  owe  to  outward 
circumstances  and  personal  intercourse, 
and  I  believe  you  are  the  only  man  in  the 
world  that  has  ever  found  any  printed 
words  of  mine  at  all  decidedly  pleasant 
or  profitable.  I  heartily  thank  you  for 
telling  me  the  fact,  and  also  for  the  fact 
itself.  There  are  probably  at  least  fifty 
persons  in  England  who  can  write  bet 
ter  poetry  than  mine,  but  I  confess  it 
pleases  me  very  much  that,  independ 
ently  of  comparisons,  you  should  see  in  it 
the  thought  and  feeling  which  I  meant 
to  express,  in  words  that  few  except 
yourself  have  perceived  to  be  anything 
but  jingle. 

I  have  lately  read  with  much  satis 
faction  an  American  poem  called  What- 
Cheer,1  which  you  probably  know.  Why 
did  not  the  writer  take  a  little  more 

1   What-Cheer,  or  Roger  "Williams  in  Banishment,  by 
Job  Durfee,  LL.  D.,  Chief  Justice  of  Rhode  Island,  pub 
lished  in  1832,  and  later  in  his  Works  in  1849. 
33 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

pains  ?  It  is  more  like  my  notion  of 
a  real  American  epic  on  a  small  scale 
than  anything  I  had  before  imagined. 
With  us  poetry  does  not  flourish.  Hart 
ley  Coleridge,  Alfred  Tennyson,  and 
Henry  Taylor  are  the  only  younger  men 
I  now  think  of  who  have  shown  any 
thing  like  genius,  and  the  last  —  perhaps 
the  most  remarkable  —  has  more  of  voli 
tion  and  understanding  than  imagination. 
Milnes  and  Trench  are  friends  of  mine, 
—  as  Taylor  is,  —  but  their  powers  are 
rather  fine  than  truly  creative.  Carlyle, 
with  all  the  vehement  prejudice  that  be 
comes  a  prophet,  is  the  great  man  arisen 
in  later  years  among  us,  and  is  daily  more 
and  more  widely  felt,  rather  than  under 
stood,  to  be  so.  I  have  just  come  from 
London,  where  I  saw  a  good  deal  of  him 
during  the  five  or  six  days  I  was  there. 
He  is  writing  down  his  last  course  of  lec 
tures,  and  will  no  doubt  publish  them. 
You  will  be  amused  by  the  clever  and 

instructed  obtuseness  of  the  criticism  on 

» 

34 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

him  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  by  I  know 
not  whom.  I  was  very  near  going  to 
America  by  the  Great  Western,  a  few 
days  ago,  to  take  care  of  a  sister-in-law 
bound  for  Canada,  where  her  husband, 
my  brother,  is.  I  should  have  paid  you 
a  visit  inevitably.  .  .  . 

My  wife  greets  you  and  yours,  as  my 
children  would,  were  they  sufficiently  en 
lightened.  The  doctors  have  made  me 
dawdle  myself  away  remedially,  and  per 
chance  irremedially,  into  a  most  unprofit 
able  eidolon.  Revive  me  soon  with  a 
book  of  yours,  and  believe  me  faithfully 
and  gratefully  yours, 

JOHN  STERLING. 

IV.  EMERSON  TO  STERLING. 

CONCORD,  y.st  March,  1841. 

MY  DEAR  SIR,  —  You  gave  me  great 
content  by  a  letter  last  summer,  which 
I  did  not  answer,  thinking  that  shortly 
I  should  have  a  book  to  send  you ;  but 
I  am  very  slow,  and  my  Essays,  printed 
35 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

at  last,  are  not  yet  a  fortnight  old.  I 
have  written  your  name  in  a  copy,  and 
sent  it  to  Carlyle  by  the  same  steamer 
which  should  carry  this  letter.  I  wish, 
but  scarce  dare  hope,  you  may  find  in  it 
anything  of  the  pristine  sacredness  of 
thought.  All  thoughts  are  holy  when 
they  come  floating  up  to  us  in  magical 
newness  from  the  hidden  Life,  and  't  is 
no  wonder  we  are  enamoured  and  love 
sick  with  these  Muses  and  Graces,  until, 
in  our  devotion  to  particular  beauties  and 
in  our  efforts  at  artificial  disposition,  we 
lose  somewhat  of  our  universal  sense  and 
the  sovereign  eye  of  Proportion.  All 
sins,  literary  and  aesthetic  and  scientific, 
as  well  as  moral,  grow  out  of  unbelief  at 
last.  We  must  needs  meddle  ambitiously, 
and  cannot  quite  trust  that  there  is 
life,  self-evolving  and  indestructible,  but 
which  cannot  be  hastened,  at  the  heart 
of  every  physical  and  metaphysical  fact. 
'Yet  how  we  thank  and  greet,  almost 
adore,  the  person  who  has  once  or  twice 
36 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

in  a  lifetime  treated  anything  sublimely, 
and  certified  us  that  he  beheld  the  Law  ! 
The  silence  and  obscurity  in  which  he 
acted  are  of  no  account,  for  everything 
is  equally  related  to  the  soul. 

I  certainly  did  not  mean,  when  I  took 
up  this  paper,  to  write  an  essay  on  Faith, 
and  yet  I  am  always  willing  to  declare 
how  indigent  I  think  our  poetry  and  all 
literature  is  become  for  want  of  that. 
My  thought  had  only  this  scope,  no 
more :  that  though  I  had  long  ago  grown 
extremely  discontented  with  my  little 
book,  yet  were  the  thoughts  in  it  honest 
in  their  first  rising,  and  honestly  reported, 
but  that  I  am  very  sensible  how  much 
in  this,  as  in  very  much  greater  matters, 
interference,  or  what  we  miscall  art,  will 
spoil  true  things.1  .  .  . 

1  In  a  letter  to  a  friend  (William  Coningham),  written 
June  20,  1841,  Sterling  says  :  "  The  only  book  of  any  pith 
and  significance  that  has  dawned  here  lately  is  a  volume 
of  Emerson's  Essays,  which,  at  a  glance,  seem  far  ahead  in 
compass  and  brilliancy  of  almost  everything  England  has 
of  late  years  (generations)  produced.  In  the  rhetorical 
37 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

I  know  not  what  sin  of  mine  averted 
from  you  so  good  a  purpose  as  to  come 
to  Canada  and  New  England.  Will  not 
the  brother  leave  the  sister  to  be  brought 
again  ?  We  have  some  beautiful  and  ex 
cellent  persons  here,  to  whom  I  long  to 
introduce  you  and  Carlyle,  and  our  houses 
now  stand  so  near  that  we  must  meet 
soon. 

Your  affectionate  servant, 

R.  W.  EMERSON. 

I   have  left   for  my  Postscript  what 

form  with  which  he  clothes  his  philosophy  he  resembles  a 
little  Schleiermacher  in  the  beautiful  Reden,  and  some  of 
Schelling's  early  works  —  Schellingian  mostly  in  spirit  — 
a  traveller  that  is  on  air-cleaving  pinions,  in  the  high  re 
gions  of  ontology.  Greek  philosophy  in  its  earlier  period 
had  a  good  deal  of  this  semi-poetic  impulse  and  colouring, 
and  we  find  it  both  in  the  East  and  in  the  writings  of 
the  mystics  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  appears  to  me,  in 
Emerson,  perfectly  genuine,  as  also  in  Novalis  (whom  he 
a  little  resembles),  and  in  both  it  marks,  I  think,  the  great 
fact  that  ours  is  an  age  of  germination  and  productive  re 
volution,  in  which  truth  that  has  so  long  outlived  its  over 
worn  and  too  narrow  [  .  .  .  ]  starts  out  with  a  new  force 
for  an  untried  [...],  and  shows,  faintly  as  yet  and  very 
doubtfully,  the  glow  and  freshness  of  youthful  hope." 

Letters  to  a  Friend,  by  John  Sterling,  1848. 
38 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

should  else  be  the  subject  of  a  new  let 
ter.  A  very  worthy  friend  of  mine,  bred 
a  scholar  at  Cambridge,  but  now  an  iron- 
manufacturer  in  this  State,  named , 

writes  me  to  request  that  I  will  ask  you 
for  a  correct  list  of  your  printed  pieces, 
prose  and  verse.  He  loves  them  very 
much,  and  wishes  to  print  them  at  Bos 
ton  :  he  does  not  know  how  far  our  taste 
will  go,  but  he  even  hopes  to  realize 
some  pecuniary  profit  from  the  Phoeni 
cians,  which  he  will  eagerly  appropriate 
to  your  benefit.  Send  me,  I  entreat,  a 
swift  reply. 

V.    STERLING  TO  EMERSON. 

PENZANCE,  April  30,  1841. 

MY  DEAR  SIR, —  It  is  nearly  a  fort 
night  since  the  receipt  of  your  welcome 
letter  of  March  31,  in  which  you  were 
good  enough  to  express  a  wish  for  a 
speedy  reply.  The  state  of  my  health 
has,  however,  been  such  as  to  excuse 
some  delay;  and,  moreover,  during  this 
39 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

very  time  I  have  been  employed  in  seek 
ing  for  a  house  somewhere  in  these  west 
ern  regions  of  ours,  as  near  as  possible 
to  America,  finding  it  impossible  to  live 
longer  in  the  dry,  sharp,  dogmatic  air  of 
Clifton.  At  last  I  have  made  a  bargain 
for  a  dwelling  at  Falmouth.  My  family 
will  probably  be  removing  in  June,  and 
until  then  it  may  be  feared  that  I  shall 
have  but  little  quiet  for  any  of  the  better 
ends  of  life,  which  indeed  the  frailty  of 
my  health  in  a  great  degree  withdraws  me 
from.  One  of  the  disadvantages  of  our 
future  abode  is  the  remoteness  from  Lon 
don,  which  produces  many  inconveniences, 
and  among  others  delay  and  difficulty  in 
procuring  books.  Even  now  I  feel  the 
mischief  in  the  want  of  the  copy  of  your 
Essays  which  your  kindness  designed  for 
me.  I  console  myself  by  reflecting  that 
I  have  a  hid  treasure  which  will  come 
to  light  some  day.  There  are  at  this 
hour,  in  the  world,  so  far  as  I  know,  just 
three  persons  writing  English  who  attempt 
40 


THE   CORRES 


to  support  human  nature  on  anything  bet 
ter  than  arbitrary  dogmas  or  hesitating 
negations.  These  are  Wordsworth,  Car- 
lyle,  and  you.  The  practical  effect,  how 
ever,  of  Wordsworth's  genius,  though  not 
of  course  its  intrinsic  value,  is  much  di 
minished  by  the  extreme  to  which  he 
carries  the  expedient  of  compromise  and 
reserve;  and  the  same  was  even  more 
true  of  my  dear  and  honoured  friend  Cole 
ridge.  Neither  Carlyle  nor  you  can  be 
charged  with  such  timidity,  and  I  look  for 
the  noblest  and  most  lasting  fruits  from 
the  writings  of  both,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  profit  and  delight  which  they  yield 
to  me  personally,  who  am  already  at  one 
with  those  friends  on  many  points  that 
most  divide  them  from  their  contempora 
ries.  Nothing  seems  more  difficult  than 
to  ascertain  what  extent  -of  influence  such 
work  as  yours  and  his  are  gaining  among 
us,  but  in  my  boyhood,  twenty  years  ago, 
I  well  remember  that,  with  quite  insignifi 
cant  exceptions,  all  the  active  and  daring 
41 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

minds  which  would  not  take  for  granted 
the  Thirty-Nine  Articles  and  the  Quar 
terly  Review  took  refuge  with  teachers 
like  Mackintosh  and  Jeffrey,  or  at  highest 
Madame  de  Stael.  Wordsworth  and  Cole 
ridge  were  mystagogues  lurking  in  cav 
erns,  and  German  literature  was  thought 
of  with  a  good  deal  less  favour  than  we 
are  now  disposed  to  show  towards  that  of 
China.  Remembering  these  things,  and 
seeing  the  revolution  accomplished  among 
a  part  of  the  most  instructed  class  and 
affecting  them  all,  and  also  the  blind, 
drunken  movements  of  awakening  intel 
ligence  among  the  labourers,  which  have 
succeeded  to  their  former  stupid  sleep, 
one  can  hardly  help  believing  that  as 
much  energetic  and  beneficial  change  has 
taken  place  among  us  during  the  last 
quarter  of  a  century  as  at  any  former  pe 
riod  during  the  same  length  of  time. 

As  to  me,  I  certainly  often  have  fan 
cied  that,  with  longer  intervals  of  health, 
I  might  be  a  fellow  worker  with  you  and 
42 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

the  one  or  two  others  whose  enterprise 
has  alone  among  all  the  projects  round 
us  at  once  high  worth  and  solid  perma 
nence.  But  the  gods  have  this  matter 
in  their  hands,  and  I  have  long  discov 
ered  that  it  is  too  large  for  mine.  Lat 
terly  I  have  been  working  at  a  tragedy, 
but  with  many  intimations  that  my  own 
catastrophe  might  come  before  that  of 
my  hero.  It  may  perhaps  be  possible  to 
complete  the  tangled  net  before  the  next 
winter  weaves  its  frostwork  among  the 
figures  and  numbs  the  workman's  hand. 

Mr. ,  whom  you  wrote  of,  deserves 

and  has  all  my  thanks.  It  is  a  true 
sunny  pleasure,  worth  more  than  all  medi 
cine,  to  know  of  any  one  man  in  the  world 
who  sees  what  one  means,  and  cares  for 
it,  and  does  not  regard  one's  heart's  blood 
as  so  much  puddle  water.  It  would  be  a 
great  satisfaction  to  me  to  have  my  things 
reprinted  as  a  whole  in  America. 

Forgive  this  random  gossip,  and  the 
43 


THE  CORRESPONDENCE 

emptiness  of  a  letter  which  ought  to  have 
expressed  much  better  how  truly  and  af 
fectionately  I  am  yours, 

JOHN  STERLING. 

VI.    STERLING   TO    EMERSON. 

FALMOUTH,  December  28th,  1841. 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  Your  Oration  of 
the  nth  August1  has  only  just  reached 
me.  Pray  accept  my  thanks  for  it.  With 
out  this  new  mark  of  your  kind  recollec 
tion  I  should  have  written  to  you  at  this 
time,  for,  after  much  work  and  much  ill 
ness,  I  have  been  looking  forward  to  the 
end  of  the  year  as  a  time  when  the  last 
twelvemonth  might  be  pleasantly  rounded 
off  with  letters  to  several  friends  for 
a  long  while  past  too  much  neglected. 
These  are  mostly  persons  with  whom  I 
have  once  been  in  more  familiar  inter 
course  than  at  present ;  years  and  sad 
dening  experiences  and  local  remoteness 

1  The  Method  of  Nature,  delivered  before  the  Society  of 
the  Adelphi  in  Waterville  College,  Maine. 
44 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

having  a  good  deal  divided  me  of  late 
from  most  of  my  former  Cambridge  and 
London  intimates.  You  are  the  only  man 
in  the  world  with  whom,  though  unseen, 
I  feel  any  sort  of  nearness  ;  all  my  other 
cordialities  having  grown  up  in  the  usual 
way  of  personal  intercourse.  This  sort  of 
anomalous  friendship  is  owing,  I  think, 
even  more  to  your  letters  than  to  your 
books,  which,  however,  are  always  near 
my  hand.  The  Essays  I  have  just  read 
over  again,  with  new  and  great  pleasure. 
It  also  often  occurs  to  me  to  look  back 
with  joy  at  the  kindness  you  have  ex 
pressed  in  writing  to  me,  and  to  say,  after 
all,  our  clay  has  been  mixed  with  some 
thing  happier  than  tears  and  blood;  for 
there  is  a  man  beyond  the  Atlantic  whom 
I  never  saw,  and  who  yet  is  to  me  a  true 
and  understanding  friend.  By  the  way, 
your  Essays  on  Love  and  Friendship  are 
to  me  perhaps  more  delightful  than  any 
thing  you  have  written.  In  this  last  Ora 
tion  there  is  much  that  I  feel  strongly; 
45 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

much,  also,  that  makes  me  speculate  on 
the  kind  of  Church  or  Public  that  you 
address,  —  which  must  be  very  unlike 
anything  among  us  ;  much,  again,  which 
does  not  find  me,  —  specially  that  abne 
gation  of  individualism  which  has  become 
less  possible  for  me  as  I  have  gone  on  in 
life,  and  which,  by  the  way,  is  perhaps 
the  most  striking  doctrinal  difference 
between  you  and  Carlyle.  As  to  your 
audience  or  church,  I  doubt  whether 
there  are  anywhere  in  Britain,  except  in 
London,  a  hundred  persons  to  be  found 
capable  of  at  all  appreciating  what  seems 
to  find,  as  spoken  by  you,  such  ready 
acceptance  from  various  bodies  of  learn 
ers  in  America.  Here  we  have  not  only 
the  same  aggressive  material  element  as 
in  the  United  States,  but  a  second  fact 
unknown  there,  namely,  the  social  au 
thority  of  Church  Orthodoxy,  derived 
from  the  close  connection  between  the 
Aristocracy  (that  is,  the  Rich)  and  the 
Clergy.  And  odd  it  is  to  see  that,  so 
46 


THE    CORRESPONDENCE 

far  as  appears  on  the  surface,  the  last 
twenty-five  years  have  produced  more  of 
this  instead  of  less. 

Incomparably  our  most  hopeful  phe 
nomenon  is  the  acceptance  of  Carlyle's 
writings.  But  how  remarkable  it  is  that 
the  critical  and  historical  difficulties  of 
the  Bible  were  pointed  out  by  clear 
sighted  English  writers  more  than  a 
century  ago,  and  thence  passed  through 
Voltaire  into  the  whole  mind  of  Conti 
nental  Europe,  and  yet  that  in  this  coun 
try  both  the  facts  and  the  books  about 
them  remain  utterly  unknown  except  to 
a  few  recluses  !  The  overthrow  of  our 
dead  Biblical  Dogmatism  must,  however, 
be  preparing,  and  may  be  nearer  than  ap 
pears.  The  great  curse  is  the  wretched 
and  seemingly  hopeless  mechanical  ped 
antry  of  our  Monastic  Colleges  at  Oxford 
and  Cambridge.  I  know  not  whether 
there  is  much  connection  between  these 
things  and  the  singular  fact,  I  believe 
quite  unexampled  in  England  for  three 
47 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

hundred  years,  that  there  is  no  man  liv 
ing  among  us,  —  literally,  I  believe,  not 
one,  —  under  the  age  of  fifty,  whose 
verses  will  pay  the  expense  of  publica 
tion.  Nevertheless  I  have  been  working 
in  that  way,  remembering  what  Corne 
lius,  the  German,  the  greatest  of  modern 
painters,  said  lately  in  London,  —  that  he 
and  Overbeck  were  obliged  to  starve  for 
twenty  years,  and  then  became  famous. 

I  am  far  from  having  forgotten  my 
promise  to  you  to  examine  and  revise  all 
my  past  writings.  But  I  find  little  that 
I  am  at  present  at  all  prepared  to  reprint. 
The  verses  I  have  carefully  corrected, 
and  these  would  form  a  volume  about 
the  size  of  the  last.  But  as  only  about 
a  hundred  copies  of  that  have  been  sold, 
I  dare  not  propose  printing  any  more, 
even  under  favour  of  my  kind  and  muni 
ficent  friend  the  Iron  Master,  to  whom 
and  to  you  I  hope  to  be  able  to  send 
soon  Straiford,  a  Tragedy,  in  print.  It 
has  cost  me  many  months  of  hard  work, 
48 


THE    CORRESPONDENCE 

and  I  have  some  hope  of  finding  a  book 
seller  rash  enough  to  print  it.  It  impos 
sible  that  I  may  see  you  early  in  summer, 
as  there  seems  a  chance  of  my  having 
to  go  on  business  to  St.  Vincent,  and  I 
would  try  to  take  you  and  Niagara  on 
my  way  home. 

Believe  me  your  affectionate 

JOHN  STERLING. 

VII.    EMERSON   TO   STERLING. 

CONCORD,  \st  Afril,  1842. 

MY  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  will  not  reckon 
how  many  weeks  and  months  I  have  let 
pass  "since  I  received  from  you  a  letter 
which  greatly  refreshed  me,  both  by  its 
tone  and  its  matter.  Since  that  time  I 
have  been  sorely  wounded,  utterly  im 
poverished,  by  the  loss  of  my  only  son,  a 
noble  child  a  little  more  than  five  years 
old,  and  in  these  days  must  beguile  my 
poverty  and  nakedness  as  I  can,  by  books 
and  studies  which  are  only  a  diversion ; 
for  it  is  only  oblivion,  not  consolation, 
49 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

that  such  a  calamity  can  admit,  whilst  it 
is  new. 

You  do  not  in  your  letter  distinctly  say 
that  you  will  presently  send  me  with  the 
Tragedy  of  Stafford,  which  I  look  for, 
the  promised  list  of  prose  and  verse  for 

Mr.  .  Yet  you  must ;  for  I  read  a 

few  weeks  ago,  in  a  Southern  newspaper, 
the  proposals  of  a  Philadelphia  bookseller 
to  print  all  your  poems.  I  wrote  imme 
diately  to  the  person  named  as  editor  in 
the  advertisement,  to  inform  him  of  our 
project  and  correspondence  with  you, 
and  of  the  Tragedy  that  should  come ; 
and  as  I  have  heard  nothing  further,  I 
presume  that  he  has  desisted.  So  far, 
then,  his  movement  is  only  a  good  symp 
tom,  and  should  engage  you  to  send  the 
list,  with  such  errata  or  revisions  as  you 
have,  with  the  Stafford,  to  which  may 
the  Muse  grant  the  highest  success,  the 
noblest  conclusion. 

I  read  with  great  pleasure  that  perhaps 
you  will  come  to  New  England  this  ensu- 
50 


THE    CORRESPONDENCE 

ing  summer.  Come,  and  bring  your  scroll 
in  your  hand.  Come  to  Boston  and  Con 
cord,  and  I  will  go  to  Niagara  with  you. 
I  have  never  been  there  ;  I  think  I  will 
go.  I  am  quite  sure  that,  to  a  pair  of 
friendly,  poetic  English  eyes,  I  could  so 
interpret  our  political,  social,  and  spirit 
ual  picture  here  in  Massachusetts  that 
it  should  be  well  worth  study  as  a  table 
of  comparison.  And  yet  perhaps,  much 
more  than  the  large  pictures,  I  fancy 
that  I  could  engage  your  interest  in  the 
vignettes  and  pendants.  However,  about 
this  time,  or  perhaps  a  few  weeks  later, 
we  shall  send  you  a  large  piece  of  spirit 
ual  New  England,  in  the  shape  of  A. 
Bronson  Alcott,  who  is  to  sail  for  Lon 
don  about  the  2Oth  April,  and  whom  you 
must  not  fail  to  see,  if  you  can  compass 
it.  A  man  who  cannot  write,  but  whose 
conversation  is  unrivalled  in  its  way ; 
such  insight,  such  discernment  of  spirits, 
such  pure  intellectual  play,  such  revolu 
tionary  impulses  of  thought ;  whilst  he 


THE    CORRESPONDENCE 

speaks  he  has  no  peer,  and  yet,  all  men 
say,  "such  partiality  of  view."  I,  who 
hear  the  same  charge  always  laid  at  my 
own  gate,  do  not  so  readily  feel  that  fault 
in  my  friend.  But  I  entreat  you  to  see 
this  man.  Since  Plato  and  Plotinus  we 
have  not  had  his  like.  I  have  written  to 
Carlyle  that  he  is  coming,  but  have  told 
him  nothing  about  him.  For  I  should 
like  well  to  set  Alcott  before  that  sharp- 
eyed  painter  for  his  portrait,  without  pre 
judice  of  any  kind.  If  A.  comes  into  your 
neighborhood,  he  will  seek  you. 

Your  picture  of  England  I  was  very 
glad  to  have.  It  confirms,  however,  my 
own  impressions.  Perhaps  you  have 
formed  too  favorable  an  opinion  of  our 
freedom  and  receptivity  here.  And  yet 
I  think  the  most  intellectual  class  of  my 
countrymen  look  to  Germany  rather  than 
to  England  for  their  recent  culture  ;  and 
Coleridge,  I  suppose,  has  always  had 
more  readers  here  than  in  Britain.  .  -.  . 

Your  friend,  R.  W.  EMERSON. 

52 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

VIII.    STERLING   TO   EMERSON. 

FALMOUTH,  June  6tk,  1842. 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  I  have  just  re 
turned  after  a  two  months'  absence, 
forced  by  ill  health  to  the  South.  Three 
weeks  in  Naples,  which  I  had  never  seen 
before,  and  one  in  Rome,  have  renewed 
a  thousand  old  impressions,  given  sub 
stance  to  many  fancies,  and  confirmed 
a  faith  in  ancient  Art  which  has  few 
sharers  in  this  country,  but  is  perhaps 
as  good  notwithstanding  as  some  other 
faiths  we  know  of. 

Your  letter  spiced  my  welcome  home, 
and  must  be  at  once  acknowledged. 
Thanks,  and  again  thanks.  Of  A.  Bron- 
son  Alcott  I  have  heard  indirectly  from 
London ;  and  as  I  must  go  there  soon, 
I  hope  to  see  him  there  in  Carlyle's 
shadow.  It  seems  too  clear  that  actual 
England  will  only  a  little  more  than 
pain  and  confuse  him,  —  as  it  does  every 
one  not  swimming  with  that  awful 
53 


THE    CORRESPONDENCE 

muddy  stream  of  existence  which  dwin 
dles  your  Mississippi  to  a  gutter.  Very 
pleasant,  however,  it  will  be  to  hear  of 
this  from  himself,  and  still  more  to  find 
him  a  real  and  luminous  soul,  and  not  a 
mere  denier  and  absorbent  of  the  light 
around. 

As  to  my  proceedings  you  must  hear 
a  long  story.  Since  my  little  volume  of 
poems  I  have  written  and  published  one 
called  the  Election,  of  which  a  kind  of 
secret  was  made,  partly  as  a  condition 
of  Murray's  agreeing  to  publish  it,  — 
otherwise  you  should  have  had  a  copy. 
It  seemed  a  work  to  give  much  offense, 
but  gave  none,  nobody  reading  it  at  all. 
Besides  this,  I  corrected  the  printed  vol 
ume,  and  rewrote  all  that  appeared  in 
Blackwood  of  my  verses.  Also  a  new 
poem,  a  Bernesque  satire  called  Coeur  de 
Lion.  Finally,  the  Tragedy  of  Straf- 
ford,  which  Carlyle  says  is  trash,  but  I 
know  not  to  be  that,  in  spite  of  certain 
inevitable  faults. 

54 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

Now  all  these  things  are  in  the  hands 
of  Lockhart,  of  the  Quarterly  Review, 
he  having  proposed  to  deal  with  them 
as  if  privately  printed,  and  expressing  an 
opinion  of  them  that  would  have  made 
his  article  an  astonishment  to  his  readers 
and  a  comfort  to  my  wife.  Thus  mat 
ters  stood  when  I  left,  two  months  ago. 
I  have  just  written  to  him  to  know 
whether  he  still  designs  giving  me  pub 
licity  through  his  huge  trumpet.  If,  as 
seems  probable,  he  repents  of  his  danger 
ous  good  nature,  I  shall  have  no  so  sat 
isfactory  course  as  to  send  to  you  the 
papers  now  in  his  hands,  to  be  used  or 
suppressed  at  your  discretion.  Immedi 
ately  on  receiving  his  answer  I  will  write 
to  inform  you  of  its  purport.  Whatever 
he  may  do,  I  foresee  no  chance  of  being 
able  to  print  in  this  country,  and  shall  be 
most  glad  to  find  efficient  patronage  be 
yond  the  Atlantic.  Illness  and  business 
have  as  yet  stopped  any  sufficient  revi 
sion  of  my  prose  matters,  which,  how- 
55 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

ever,  I  now  intend  looking  into  and  doc 
toring. 

The  pleasantest  chance  acquaintances 
of  my  recent  journey  were  Americans,  — 

a  Mr.  and  Mrs.  M (he,  a    lawyer), 

of  Albany.  His  enjoyment  of  works  of 
art  is,  for  a  man  who  had  never  seen 
any  before,  really  wonderful.  My  future 
movements  most  uncertain,  —  not  point 
ing,  I  fear,  towards  you;  perhaps  Ma 
deira  next  winter.  .  .  . 

Yours,  JOHN  STERLING. 

I  have  said  nothing  of  the  painful  part 
of  your  letter.  You  will  know  that  I 
grieve  for  you  and  Mrs.  Emerson. 

IX.     STERLING  TO   EMERSON. 

June  13^,  1842. 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  Lockhart's  ill 
ness  has  prevented  him  doing  anything 
about  my  matters.  But  he  still  expresses 
the  same  decided  good  will  and  purpose 
for  the  future.  Meanwhile  I  have  asked 
him  for  the  MSS.,  and  shall  send  you 
56 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

very  soon  (probably  within  a  fortnight) 
a  volume  of  prose  tales,  of  which  the 
Onyx  Ring  is  the  principal  (none  of 
them  new),  and  about  as  much  verse, 
including  the  Sexton's  Daughter,  Mis 
cellaneous  Poems,  and  the  Election.  Of 
course  I  will  write  with  them.  But  it 
may  be  said  now  that  they  must  not  be 
printed  among  you  unless  with  a  fair 
prospect  of  the  expenses  being  paid.  No 
doubt  they  are  better  than  a  thousand 
things  that  sell  largely,  but  something 
in  them  that  would  interest  you  and 
other  thinkers  unfits  them  for  the  mul 
titude  who  have  other  business  than 
thinking.  At  all  events,  believe  me 
always  yours, 

JOHN  STERLING. 

X.  STERLING  TO  EMERSON. 

LONDON,  June  2&th,  1842. 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  At  last  I  have 
been  able  to  make  some  progress  among 
my  papers,  and  am  about  to  despatch  a 
57 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

parcel  to  you,  consisting  of  two  main 
divisions  :  the  first  containing  eight 
Tales,  of  which  the  largest  and  most 
important  is  the  Onyx  Ring  ;  and  the 
other  of  five  sections  of  Poems  :  first, 
The  Sexton's  Daughter ;  2,  Miscellane 
ous  Poems  (those  already  published  in 
my  volume) ;  3,  Hymns  of  a  Hermit 
(greatly  altered);  4,  Thoughts  in  Rhyme 
(corrected)  ;  5,  The  Election.  These 
things,  if  it  be  thought  worth  doing 
anything  with  them,  might  appear  either 
in  two  small  volumes,  first  verse,  sec 
ond  prose,  or  in  one.  If  I  am  able  to 
put  together  a  lot  of  strays  and  prose 
thoughts,  you  shall  have  them  by  and 
by.  But  as  to  the  whole,  I  must  ear 
nestly  beg  that  you  and  my  other  kind 
friends  in  America  will  feel  yourselves  at 
perfect  liberty  to  take  no  further  step  in 
the  matter. 

With  my  MSS.  I  shall  put  up  a  Tra 
gedy  by  a  friend  of  mine,  which  strikes 
me  as  singularly  fine. 
58 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

The  last  fortnight  I  have  been  in  Lon 
don  in  the  midst  of  bustle,  but  with  the 
great  delight  of  seeing  Carlyle,  who  is 
more  peaceful  than  I  have  ever  known 
him.  He  is  immersing  himself  in  Puri 
tanism  and  Cromwell,  —  matters  with 
which  you  Americans  have  almost  a 
closer  connection  than  we.  If  he  writes 
our  Civil  War,  the  book  will  have  a  pro 
digious  advantage  over  his  French  Re 
volution,  that  there  will  be  one  great 
Egyptian  Colossus  towering  over  the 
temples,  tribes,  and  tents  around. 

Yesterday,  on  his  table,  I  found  the 
newspaper  report  of  certain  lectures, 
which,  however,  I  could  only  glance  at. 
A  deep  and  full  phrase  that,  "  The  Poet 
is  the  man  without  impediment." 

Mr.  Alcott  has  been  kind  enough  to 
call  on  me,  but  I  was  out  (out  indeed 
then),  and  he  would  not  leave  his  ad 
dress.  Otherwise  no  engagement  would 
have  prevented  my  finding  him. 

Thought  is  leaking  into  this  country, 
59 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

—  even  Strauss  sells.  I  hear  his  copy 
right  is  worth  more  in  Germany  than 
that  of  any  living  writer,  his  books  selling 
like  Bulwer's  novels  among  us.  Some 
one  else  has  arisen  there  who  attacks 
Strauss  for  being  too  orthodox  ;  but  the 
Prussian  government  has  taken  Strauss 
under  its  wing,  and  forbidden  his  oppo 
nent's  books.  Forgive  this  random  un 
diplomatic  stuff  from 

Your  affectionate 

JOHN  STERLING. 

XI.    STERLING   TO   EMERSON. 

FALMOUTH,  March  2gth,  1843. 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  I  have  for  many 
months  been  leading  a  dream-life,  fruit 
ful  in  no  result.  For  a  long  part  of  the 
time  I  was  lying  in  bed  very  ill,  and 
indeed,  as  it  seemed,  near  to  death.  The 
prospect  was  indistinct  enough,  but  far 
from  frightful,  and  at  the  worst  of  the 
disease  it  never  occurred  to  me  as  possi 
ble  that  one's  thoughts  would  terminate 
60 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

with  one's  pulse.  On  the  whole,  though 
a  great  deal  of  time  has  been  quite  lost, 
the  experience  is  worth  something.  In 
the  last  summer,  also,  I  had  a  long  and 
severe  illness.  And  the  upshot  seems  to 
me  that  I  must  live,  if  at  all,  on  the 
terms  of  the  various  mythical  personages 
doomed  for  alternate  halves  of  their  year 
to  be  lost  in  Hades.  Even  the  half  is 
more  than  I  can  count  on  in  this  upper- 
living  air.  What  uncertainty  this  gives 
to  all  one's  projects  and  arrangements 
you  can  well  imagine. 

In  the  midst  of  this  confusion,  it  is 
some,  though  rather  a  melancholy  amuse 
ment  to  continue  one's  lookout  over  the 
world,  and  to  see  the  daily  mass  of  mis 
ery,  nonsense,  and  non  -  consciousness 
shaping  itself  into  an  historic  period  that 
will  some  time  or  other  have  its  chroni 
cler  and  heroic  singer,  and  look  not  quite 
so  beggarly.  Of  the  properly  spiritual, 
England,  however,  still  shows  almost  as 
little  as  the  camps  of  the  Barbarians  who 
61 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

deluged  Rome.  Carlyle  is  our  one  Man, 
and  he  seems  to  feel  it  his  function,  not 
to  build  up  and  enjoy  along  with  his  Age, 
as  even  a  Homer,  a  Herodotus,  could, 
but  to  mourn,  denounce,  and  tear  in 
pieces.  I  find  nothing  so  hard  as  to  dis 
cover  what  effect  he  really  produces. 
Probably  the  greater  part  of  his  readers 
find  in  him  only  the  same  sort  of  mock- 
turtle  nutriment  as  in  Macaulay.  Our 
mechanical  civilization,  with  us  as  with 
you,  of  course,  goes  on  fast  enough.  The 
Time  spins  daily  more  and  bigger  teeto 
tums  with  increasing  speed  and  louder 
hum,  and  keeps  on  asking  if  they  be  not 
really  celestial  orbs,  and  that  the  music  of 
the  spheres.  Of  anything  much  higher, 
the  men  of  your  and  my  generation,  from 
whom  ten  years  ago  I  hoped  much,  seem 
hardly  capable.  A  good  many  of  them, 
however,  I  do  think  wish  for  something 
better  than  they  are  able  to  conceive  dis 
tinctly,  much  less  to  realize. 
62 


THE    CORRESPONDENCE 

Of  the  last  age,  one  respectable  relic, 
you  will  see,  is  just  removed  forever  : 
Southey  is  dead,  with  the  applause  of  all 
good  men,  but  with  hardly  much  deeper 
feeling  from  any.  Strange  proof  enough 
of  the  want  of  poems  in  our  language, 
that  he  should  ever  have  been  held  a 
writer  of  such.  Partly,  perhaps,  because 
his  works  had  what  one  finds  in  so  few 
English,  the  greatness  of  plan  and  steadi 
ness  of  execution  required  for  a  master- 
work,  —  though  these  were  almost  their 
only  merits.  I  never  saw  him,  and  do 
not  much  regret  it.  One  living  man  in 
Europe  whom  I  should  most  wish  to  see 
is  Tieck,  —  by  far,  I  think,  the  greatest 
poet  living.  His  Vittoria  Accorambona 
is  well  worth  your  reading.  It  repro 
duces  in  the  sixteenth  century  and  in 
Italy  something  like  the  crimson  robe, 
the  prophetic  slain  Cassandra,  and  the 
tragic  greatness  of  the  Agamemnonian 
Muse,  but  this  combined  at  once  with 
63 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

the  near  meanness  and  the  refined  culti 
vation  of  our  modern  life. 

My  own  literary  matters  lie  in  mag 
netic  sleep.  Stafford  is  there  finished. 
But  I  have  not  been  able  to  open  it  for 
many  months,  and  there  are  a  couple  of 
minor  scenes  which  I  fancy  I  could  mend  ; 
and  I  can  do  nothing  in  the  matter  till 
I  look  at  these,  which  has  not  yet  been 
possible. 

In  the  meanwhile,  during  my  illness, 
I  have  entangled  myself  in  the  fancy  of 
a  long  Orlandish  or  Odyssean  poem,  of 
which  I  have  written  some  eight  cantos, 
and  can  promise  you  at  least  some  amuse 
ment  from  it  a  hundred  and  fifty  years 
hence,  by  the  time  England  discovers 
that  it  is  farther  from  having  a  religion 
and  America  a  constitution  than  either 
country  now  supposes. 

Believe  me  with  true  affection  yours, 
JOHN  STERLING. 
64 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

XII.    EMERSON  TO  STERLING. 

CONCORD,  ythjune,  1843. 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  I  was  very  sorry 
to  let  the  last  steamer  go  to  England 
without  an  acknowledgment  of  your  last 
letter,  whose  nobleness  under  such  ad 
verse  events  had  moved  my  admiration ; 

but  I  waited  to  hear  again  from , 

until  it  was  too  late.  I  have  twice 
charged  that  amiable  but  "  slow  Morti 
mer"  to  write  you  himself  a  report  of  his 
doubts  and  projects,  and  I  hope  he  does 
so  by  the  packet  of  to-morrow.  Lest  he 
should  not,  I  will  say  that  I  have  twice 
heard  from  him  since  I  sent  him  your 
box  of  printed  sheets  and  MSS.  last  sum 
mer  (with  my  selected  list  of  imprimenda), 
but  both  letters  expressed  a  great  indeci 
sion  as  to  what  he  should  do.  In  truth, 
our  whole  foreign-book  market  has  suf 
fered  a  revolution  within  eighteen  months, 
by  the  new  practice  of  printing  whatever 
good  books  or  vendible  books  you  send 
65 


THE    CORRESPONDENCE 

us,  in  the  cheapest  newspaper  form,  and 
hawking  them  in  the  streets  at  twelve, 
eighteen,  and  twenty-five  cents  the  whole 
work ;  and  I  suppose  that  -  -  fears,  if 
his  book  should  prove  popular,  that  it 
would  be  pirated  at  once.  I  printed  Car- 
lyle's  Past  and  Present  two  months  ago, 
with  a  preface  beseeching  all  honest  men 
to  spare  our  book ;  but  already  a  wretched 
reprint  has  appeared,  published,  to  be  sure, 
by  a  man  unknown  to  the  Trade,  whose 
wretchedness  of  type  and  paper,  I  have 
hope,  will  still  give  my  edition  the  mar 
ket  for  all  persons  who  have  eyes  and 
wish  to  keep  them.  But,  beside  the  risk 
of  piracy,  this  cheap  system  hurts  the 
sale  of  dear  books,  or  such  whose  price 
contains  any  profit  to  an  author.  Add  one 
more  unfavorable  incident  which  damped 
the  design,  —  that  a  Philadelphia  edition 
of  Sterling's  Poems  was  published  a  year 
ago,  though  so  ill  got  up  that  it  did  not 

succeed  well,  our  booksellers  think.    

must  be  forgiven  if  he  hesitated,  but  he 
66 


THE    CORRESPONDENCE 

shall  not  be  forgiven  if  he  do  not  tell 
you  his  own  -mind.  I  am  heartily  sorry 
that  this  friendly  and  pleasing  design 
should  have  arrived  at  no  better  issue. 
We  shall  have  better  news  for  you  one 
day. 

I  am  touched  and  stimulated  by  your 
heroic  mood  and  labours,  so  ill  as  you 
have  been.  Please  God,  you  are  better 
now,  and,  I  hope,  well.  But  truly  I  think 
it  a  false  standard  to  estimate  health,  as 
the  world  does,  by  some  fat  man,  instead 
of  by  our  power  to  do  our  work.  If  I 
should  lie  by  whenever  people  tell  me  I 
grow  thin  and  puny,  I  should  lose  all  my 
best  days.  Task  these  bad  bodies  and 
they  will  serve  us  and  will  be  just  as 
well  a  year  hence,  if  they  grumble  to-day. 
But  in  this  country  this  is  safer,  for  we 
are  a  nation  of  invalids.  You  English  are 
ruddy  and  robust,  and  sickness  with  you 
is  a  more  serious  matter.  Yet  everything 
in  life  looks  so  differently  before  and  be 
hind,  and  we  reverse  our  scale  of  success 
67 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

so  often,  in  our  retrospections  at  our  own 
days  and  doings,  that  our  estimate  of  our 
own  health,  even,  must  waver  when  we 
see  what  we  have  done  and  gained  in 
the  dark  hours.  I  fancy  sometimes  that  I 
am  more  practically  an  idealist  than  most 
of  my  companions  ;  that  I  value  qualities 
more  and  magnitudes  less.  I  must  flee 
to  that  refuge,  too,  if  I  should  try  to  tell 
you  what  I  have  done  and  do.  I  have 
very  little  to  show.  Yet  my  days  seem 
often  rich,  and  I  am  as  easily  pleased  as 
my  children  are.  I  write  a  good  deal,  but 
it  is  for  the  most  part  without  connection, 
on  a  thousand  topics.  Yet  I  hope,  within 
a  year,  to  get  a  few  chapters  ripened  into 
some  symmetry  and  wholeness  on  the  top 
ics  that  interest  all  men  permanently. 

Carlyle's  new  book,  which  on  some  ac 
counts  I  think  his  best,  has  given  even 
additional  interest  to  your  English  prac 
tical  problem ;  and  if  your  conservatism 
was  not  so  stark,  an  inertia  passing  that 
68 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

of  Orientalism,  the  world  would  look  to 
England  with  almost  hourly  expectation 
of  outbreak  and  revolution.  But  the 
world  is  fast  getting  English  now;  and 
if  the  old  hive  should  get  too  warm  and 
crowded,  you  may  circumnavigate  the 
globe  without  leaving  your  language  or 
your  kindred. 

In  the  hope  that  my  salutations  may 
find  you  stronger,  and  strong,  and  full 
of  good  thoughts  and  good  events,  I  am 
yours  affectionately, 

R.  W.  EMERSON. 

XIII.    STERLING  TO   EMERSON. 

VENTNOR,  I.  OF  WIGHT, 
October  jth,  1843. 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  At  last  on  this 
Saturday  evening  there  is  some  cessation 
of  the  din  of  workmen,  and  I  can  sit  down 
to  write  to  you.  The  last  three  months 
have  been  all  one  muddle  of  carpenters 
and  other  materialists,  who  have  hardly 
left  me  an  hour,  and  certainly  not  a  day, 
69 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

quite  undisturbed  by  their  practical  non 
sense.  Now  I  can  draw  breath  (till  Mon 
day  morning)  in  a  house  which  promises 
to  be  as  good  as  a  wise  man  needs,  and 
far  better  than  most  wise  men  have  ever 
enjoyed  on  earth.  It  is  adjoining  a  small 
new  stone-built  town,  on  the  south  coast, 
and  close  to  the  sea,  and  I  have  some 
acres  (half  a  dozen)  of  field  and  shrubbery 
about  me.  One  inducement  for  me  is  the 
shelter  and  mild  climate.  But  a  thousand 
times  I  have  lamented  my  folly  in  enga 
ging  myself  with  a  pest  of  improvements, 
etc.,  which  has  swallowed  up  all  my  sum 
mer. 

Would  that  I  could  hope  to  be  re 
warded  by  such  a  pleasure  as  having  you 
sometime  under  my  thatched  roof !  In 
the  midst  of  these  mechanical  arrange 
ments,  all  higher  thoughts  have  been  like 
birds  in  an  aviary  looking  up  through 
squares  of  wire  that  cut  across  the  sky, 
whose  winged  children  they  imprison. 
The  birds  are  there,  and  the  heavens 
70 


THE   CORRESPON 


OF   THK 

UNIVERSITY 


also,  and  how  little  it  is,  but  how  insu 
perable,  that  divides  them  !  If  any  good 
has  grown  upon  me  strongly,  it  is  the 
faith  in  a  Somewhat  above  all  this,  —  a 
boat  within  reach  of  us  at  our  worst. 
Every  soul  on  earth,  says  Mahomet,  is 
born  capable  of  Islam.  But  you,  perhaps, 
—  though  having  your  own  difficulties,  — 
hardly  know  the  utter  loneliness  of  a 
Rational  Soul  in  this  England.  Except 
Carlyle,  I  do  not  know  one  man  who  sees 
and  lives  in  the  idea  of  a  God  not  exclu 
sively  Christian  :  two  or  three  lads,  per 
haps  ;  but  every  grown  man  of  nobler 
spirit  is  either  theoretical  and  lukewarm, 
or  swathed  up  in  obsolete  sectarianism. 

On  Sunday  last  I  had  indeed  a  visit 
from  an  old  Friend  who  delighted  me  by 
his  cordial  candour,  —  John  Mill,  son  of 
the  historian  of  India,  and  in  many  ways 
notable  among  us  now.  His  big  book  on 
Logic  is,  I  suppose,  the  highest  piece  of 
Aristotelianism  that  England  has  brought 
forth,  at  all  events  in  our  time.  How 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

the  sweet,  ingenuous  nature  of  the  man 
has  lived  and  thriven  out  of  his  father's 
cold  and  stringent  atheism  is  wonderful 
to  think,  —  and  most  so  to  me,  who  dur 
ing  fifteen  years  have  seen  his  gradual 
growth  and  ripening.  There  are  very 
few  men  in  the  world  on  whose  generous 
affection  I  should  more  rely  than  on  his, 
whose  system  seems  at  first  (but  only 
seems)  a  Code  of  Denial. 

I  was  more  struck,  not  long  ago,  by  the 
mists  of  one  of  the  most  zealous  of  the 
new  Oxford  School,  —  like  Newman,  a 
fellow  of  Oriel,  and  holding  Newman  the 
first  of  teachers.  Yet  this  man,  who  fan 
cies  he  can  blot  a  thousand  years  out  of 
God's  Doings,  has  a  zeal,  a  modesty,  a 
greatness  of  soul,  that  I  have  hardly 
found  in  more  than  half  a  dozen  others 
on  earth.  He  is,  I  hear,  sometimes  half 
mad  with  ill  health  and  low  spirits  ;  a 
scholar,  a  gentleman,  a  priest,  if  there  is 
any  true  one  living,  and  would  let  himself 
be  racked  or  gibbeted  to  help  any  suffer- 
72 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

ing  or  erring  brother  with  less  self-com 
placence  than  most  of  us  feel  in  giving 
away  a  shilling.  Strange,  is  it  not,  to 
find  Egeria  still  alive,  and  in  this  shape, 
too,  infcEce  Romuli  ? 

I  rejoice  that  you  have  something 
more  in  store  for  us  ;  I  shall  look  out 
eagerly  for  your  lights  ahead.  Life  with 
me  has  grown  empty  and  dim  enough, 
and  needs  what  comfort  other  men's 
faith  is  capable  of  supplying.  .  .  . 

Yours,  JOHN  STERLING. 

I  do  not  know  if  the  bookseller  has 
sent  you  a  copy  of  a  Ventnor  Tragedy 
which  I  ventured  to  decorate  with  your 
name. 

The  Strafford  was  thus  dedicated  :  — 

TO   RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON. 

Teacher  of  starry  wisdom  high  serene, 
Receive  the  gift  our  common  ground  supplies  ; 
Red  flowers,  dark  leaves,  that  ne'er  on  earth  had  been 
Without  the  influence  of  sidereal  skies. 

J.  S. 

VENTNOR,  ISLE  OF  WIGHT, 
Midsummer  Day,  1843. 

73 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 


XIV.    EMERSON    TO  STERLING. 

CONCORD,  October  nth,  1843. 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  You  have  done 
me  an  honour  to  which  I  have  not  the 
least  title,  and  yet  it  is  very  dear  and 
animating  to  me,  in  putting  my  name  in 
purple  lines  before  this  rich  and  wise 
poem  of  Strafford.  I  blushed  to  read, 
and  then  thought  I  should  nevermore 
be  unworthy,  and  these  loving  words 
should  be  an  amulet  against  evil  ever 
more.  I  might  easily  mistrust  my  judg 
ment  of  the  Play  in  my  love  of  the  Poet, 
and,  if  you  think  so,  may  be  wholly 
wrong,  for  I  read  it  with  lively  interest, 
like  a  friend's  manuscript,  from  end  to 
end,  and  grew  prouder  and  richer  in  my 
friend  with  every  scene.  The  subject  is 
excellent,  so  great  and  eventful  a  crisis, 
and  each  of  the  figures  in  that  history 
filled  and  drunk  with  a  national  idea,  and 
with  such  antagonism  as  makes  them 
colossal,  and  adds  solemnity  and  omens 
74 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

to  their  words  and  actions.  I  was  glad 
to  find  the  Countess  of  Carlisle  in  poetry, 
whom  I  had  first  learned  to  know  by  that 
very  lively  sketch  from  Sir  Toby  Mat 
thew,  which  I  read  in  one  of  Forster's 
Lives.  I  do  not  yet  know  whether  the 
action  of  the  piece  is  sufficiently  stout 
and  irresistible,  alarming  and  victimizing 
the  reader  after  the  use  of  the  old  "  puri 
fiers  ;  "  it  seems  to  me,  as  I  hastily  read, 
managed  with  judgment  and  lighted  with 
live  coals ;  but  I  am  quite  sure  of  the 
dense  and  strong  sentences  whose  energy 
and  flowing  gentleness  at  the  same  time 
give  the  authentic  expression  of  health 
and  perfect  manhood. 

I  rejoice  when  I  remember  in  what 
sickness  and  interruption,  by  your  own 
account,  this  drama  had  its  elaboration 
and  completion.  As  soon  as  I  had  read 
it  once,  Margaret  Fuller,  our  genius  and 
Muse  here,  and  a  faithful  friend  of  yours, 
seized  the  book  peremptorily  and  carried 
it  away,  so  that  I  am  by  no  means  master 
75 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

of  its  contents.  Meantime,  may  the  just 
honour  of  all  the  best  in  Old  and  in  New 
England  cherish  the  poem  and  the  Poet. 
Send  me,  I  pray  you,  better  news  of  your 
health  than  your  last  letter  contained.  I 
observe  that  you  date  from  the  Isle  of 

Wight.     Two  letters  (one  from and 

one  from  me)  went  to  your  address  in 
Falmouth,  in  the  course  of  the  last  sum 
mer,  which  I  hope,  for  the  exculpation  of 
your  friends  here,  you  received. 

I  am,  I  think,  to  sit  fast  at  home  this 
winter  coming,  and  arrange  a  heap  of 
materials  that  much  and  wide  scribbling 
has  collected.  I  shall  probably  send  this 
letter  by  Mr.  James,  a  man  who  adds  to 
many  merits  the  quality  of  being  a  good 
friend  of  both  you  and  me,  and  who,  pro 
posing  with  his  family  to  spend  a  winter 
in  England,  for  health  and  travel,  thinks 
he  has  a  right  to  see  you.  He  is  at  once 
so  manly,  so  intelligent,  and  so  ardent 
that  I  have  found  him  excellent  com- 
76 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

pany.      The   highest   and   holiest    Muse 
dwell  with  you  always. 

Yours  affectionately, 

R.  W.  EMERSON. 

My  friend  and  near  neighbor,  W.  El- 
lery  Channing  (a  nephew  of  the  late  Dr. 
C),  desires  me  to  send  you  his  little  vol 
ume  of  poems.  I  love  Ellery  so  much  as 
to  have  persuaded  myself  long  since  that 
he  is  a  true  poet,  if  these  lines  should  not 
show  it.  Read  them  with  as  much  love 
in  advance  as  you  can.  Mr.  J.  will  bring 
them. 

XV.    EMERSON   TO  STERLING. 

CONCORD,  October  i$th,  1843. 

MY  DEAR  STERLING,  —  Henry  James, 
of  New  York,  a  man  of  ingenious  and 
liberal  spirit,  and  a  chief  consolation  to 
me  when  I  visit  his  city,  proposes  to 
spend  a  winter  in  England  with  his  fam 
ily,  for  his  health  and  other  benefit,  and 
desires  to  see  you,  for  whom  he  has 
77 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

much  affection.  I  am  quite  sure  that  I 
shall  serve  you  both  by  sending  him  to 
you.  Yours, 

R.  W.  EMERSON. 

XVI.    EMERSON   TO   STERLING.     . 

CONCORD,  -pst  January,  1844. 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  The  mercury  has 
been  at  zero  at  my  door,  with  little  varia 
tion,  for  more  than  a  week.  Boston  har 
bour  is  frozen  up  for  six  miles  down  to 
the  forts,  yet  the  newspapers  tell  me 
this  morning  that  the  merchants  have 
resolved  to  saw  through  these  miles  a 
passage  for  your  royal  steamer  and  other 
sea-going  ships  to-morrow,  and  I  must 
not  wait  another  hour  if  I  would  speed 
my  good  wishes  to  the  Isle  of  Wight. 

By  an  unhappy  chance,  the  January 
Dials  did  not  sail  as  they  ought  in  last 
month's  steamer,  and  you  should  receive 
by  this,  via  London  and  Carlyle,  a  copy 
of  No.  XV.,  which  contains  a  critique, 
written  by  Margaret  Fuller,  on  Strafford, 
78 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

and  other  children  of  genius,  both  yours 
and  other  men's.  I  heartily  hope  you 
will  find  something  right  and  wise  in  my 
friend's  judgments,  if  with  something  in 
adequate,  and  if  her  pen  ramble  a  little. 
It  was  her  own  proposition  to  write  the 
piece,  led  by  her  love  both  of  you  and  of 
me.  After  she  began  it,  she  decided  to 
spread  her  censure  so  wide,  and  com 
prise  all  dramas  as  well  as  Strafford. 
She  was  full  of  spirits  in  her  undertak 
ing,  but,  unhappily,  the  week  devoted  to 
its  performance  was  exanimated,  may  I 
say,  by  cruel  aches  and  illness,  and  she 
wrote  me  word  that  she  was  very  sorry, 
but  the  piece  was  ruined.  However,  as 
you  are  by  temper  and  habit  such  a  cos 
mopolitan,  I  hope  one  day  you  shall  see 
with  eyes  my  wise  woman,  hear  her  with 
ears,  and  see  if  you  can  escape  the  virtue 
of  her  enchantments.  She  has  a  sultry 
Southern  nature,  and  Corinna  never  can 
write. 

I  learned  by  your  last  letter  that  you 
79 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

had  builded  a  house,  and  I  glean  from 
Russell  all  I  can  of  your  health  and 
aspect ;  and  as  James  is  gone  to  your 
island,  I  think  to  come  still  nearer  to 
you  through  his  friendly  and  intelligent 
eyes.  Send  me  a  good  gossiping  letter, 
and  prevent  all  my  proxies.  What  can 
I  tell  you  to  invite  such  retaliation?  I 
dwell  with  my  mother,  my  wife,  and  two 
little  girls,  the  eldest  five  years  old,  in 
the  midst  of  flowery  fields.  I  wasted 
much  time  from  graver  work  in  the  last 
two  months  in  reading  lectures  to  Ly 
ceums  far  and  near ;  for  there  is  now 
a  "lyceum,"  so  called,  in  almost  every 
town  in  New  England,  and,  if  I  would 
accept  every  invitation,  I  might  read  a 
lecture  every  night.  My  neighbors  in 
this  village  of  Concord  are  Ellery  Chan- 
ning,  who  sent  his  poems  to  you,  a  youth 
of  genius ;  Thoreau,  whose  name  you  may 
have  seen  in  the  Dial ;  and  Hawthorne, 
a  writer  of  tales  and  historiettes,  whose 
name  you  may  not  have  seen,  though  he 
80 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

too  prints  books.  All  these  three  persons 
are  superior  to  their  writings,  and  there 
fore  not  obnoxious  to  Kant's  observation, 
"Detestable  is  the  company  of  literary 
men." 

Good  as  these  friends  are,  my  habit  is 
so  solitary  that  we  do  not  often  meet. 
My  literary  or  other  tasks  accomplished 
are  too  little  to  tell.  I  do  not  know  how 
it  happens,  but  there  are  but  seven  hours, 
often  but  five,  in  an  American  scholar's 
day ;  the  twelve,  thirteen,  fifteen,  that  we 
have  heard  of,  in  German  libraries,  are 
fabulous  to  us.  Probably  in  England  you 
find  a  mean  between  Massachusetts  and 
Germany.  The  performances  of  Goethe, 
the  performances  of  Scott,  appear  super 
human  to  us  in  their  quantity,  let  alone 
their  quality.  Sometimes  I  dream  of  writ 
ing  the  only  historical  thing  I  know,  — 
the  influence  of  old  Calvinism,  now  almost 
obsolete,  upon  the  education  of  the  exist 
ing  generation  in  New  England.  I  am 
quite  sure,  if  it  could  be  truly  done,  it 
81 


THE    CORRESPONDENCE 

would  be  new  to  your  people,  and  a  valu 
able  memorandum  to  ours. 

I  have  lately  read  George  Sand's  Con- 
suelo,  of  which  the  first  volume  pleased 
me  mightily,  the  others  much  less,  and 
yet  the  whole  book  shows  an  extraordi 
nary  spirit.  The  writer  apprehends  the 
force  of  simplicity  of  behaviour,  and  en 
joys,  how  greatly,  the  meeting  of  two 
strong  natures.  But  I  have  gossiped  to 
the  end  of  my  line,  and  so  do  commend 
myself  affectionately  to  you. 

R.  W.  EMERSON. 

XVII.     STERLING  TO   EMERSON. 

VENTNOR,  February  zoth,  1844. 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  I  had  proposed 
a  letter  to  you  as  this  morning's  work, 
and  now  down  the  throat  of  my  purpose 
jumps  your  own  of  January  31.  Long 
since  I  ought  to  have  thanked  you  for 
the  previous  one,  but  have  been  too  sick 
and  sad.1  Your  reception  of  Stafford 

1  During  the  year  Sterling's  mother  and  wife  had  died 
82 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

was  a  great  pleasure,  —  so  far  as  any 
thing  is  so  now.  The  work  has  become 
altogether  distant  and  distasteful  to  me, 
but  I  can  enjoy  your  kindness.  I  got 
from  an  English  bookseller  the  October 
Dial,  which  is  pleasant  reading.  If  one 
could  have  the  whole  of  the  former  num 
bers  it  would  be  good  for  me,  but  I  own 
that,  except  your  own  doings,  there  is 
little  in  it  that  comes  home.  Channing, 
I  suppose,  I  must  thank  for  his  friendly 
gift ;  but  the  volume  —  perhaps  from  my 
own  deadness  —  gave  me  little  true  com 
fort.  It  seemed  to  show  abundant  recep 
tivity,  but  of  productivity  little.  Every 
thing  can  too  easily  be  referred  to  some 
other  parent.  If  he  would  read  diligently 
the  correspondence  of  Schiller  and  Goethe, 
he  would  learn  much,  and  would  either 
cease  to  be  a  poet  or  become  a  good  one. 
At  least  one  hopes  so.  That  book  has 

within  three  days.  Sorrowful  and  sick,  he  had  moved  with 
his  six  children,  two  of  them  infants,  to  his  last  earthly 
home,  the  house  in  Ventnor. 

83 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

to  me  greater  value  than  any  or  all  those 
on  the  theory  of  art,  —  besides  the  beau 
tiful,  mild,  and  solid  humanity  which  it 
displays  in  every  word.  There  are  hardly 
perhaps  three  Englishmen  living  with  the 
slightest  thought  of  what  Art  is,  —  the 
unity  and  completeness  of  the  Ideal.  The 
crowd,  when  weary  of  themselves  and 
their  own  noisy  choking  Reality,  take 
refuge  in  Fiction,  but  care  not  how  lazy, 
coarse,  and  empty.  The  few  among  us 
who  look  higher,  generally  the  young, 
seem  satisfied,  not  with  the  Ideal,  but 
their  own  feelings  and  notions  about  it, 
which  they  substitute  for  the  thing  it 
self  ;  sermons  on  the  Incarnation  instead 
of  the  Incarnate  God.  Hence  all  the 
dreamy  Shelleyan  rhapsodies  and  rhetor 
ical  Wordsworthian  moralizings.  But  who 
seriously  strives  to  create  images  ?  Who 
does  not  waste  himself  in  hunting  shad 
ows,  forgetting  that  you  cannot  have  them 
without  first  getting  the  substance,  and 
84 


THE    CORRESPONDENCE 

that  with  it  you  can  never  be  in  want  of 
them  ? 

So  it  stands  with  us  in  England :  is 
it  otherwise  in  America?  I  fear  not. 
Tennyson  does  better,  but  does  little,  and 
they  say  will  hardly  wake  out  of  tobacco 
smoke  into  any  sufficient  activity.  Car- 
lyle,  our  far  greater  Tacitus,  in  truth 
hates  all  poetry  except  for  that  element 
in  it  which  is  not  poetic  at  all,  and  aims 
at  giving  a  poetic  completeness  to  his 
toric  fact.  He  is  the  greatest  of  moral 
ists  and  politicians,  a  gigantic  anti-poet. 
As  far  as  I  know,  there  is  not  a  man 
besides,  on  either  side  of  the  Atlantic, 
writing  in  English,  either  in  prose  or 
verse,  who  need  be  spoken  of. 

Your  friend  James  pleased  me  well. 
Would  that  he  could  have  stayed  here 
longer  and  let  me  know  more  of  him ! 
But  after  all  regrets,  Life  is  good,  —  to 
see  the  face  of  Truth,  and  enjoy  the 
85 


THE    CORRESPONDENCE 

beauty  of  tears  and  smiles,  and  know 
one's  self  a  man,  and  love  what  belongs 
to  manhood,  —  all  this  is  a  blessing  that 
may  console  us  for  all  wants,  and  that 
sickness  and  sorrow,  and,  one  may  trust, 
Death,  cannot  take  away.  Yet  I  wish  I 
could  have  talk  with  you  some  day. 
I  am  yours, 

JOHN  STERLING. 

This  is  a  miserable  scrap  to  send  in 
the  track  of  Columbus  and  Raleigh.  But 
I  have  been  too  ill  in  body,  and  am  still 
too  sad  in  mind. 

XVIII.    STERLING   TO   EMERSON. 

VENTNOR,  I.  OF  WIGHT,  June  itfh,  1844. 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  Perhaps  you  may 
have  heard  that  for  the  last  three  months 
I  have  been  a  dying  man.  It  is  certain 
that  I  never  can  recover.  But  there  seems 
a  melancholy  possibility  that  I  may  have 
to  drag  on  a  year  or  two  of  helplessness, 
cut  off  from  all  society  and  incapable  of 
any  exertion.  It  is  a  case  for  submission, 
86 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

but  hardly  for  thankfulness.  The  begin 
ning  of  the  illness  was  a  violent  and  ex 
tensive  bleeding  from  the  lungs,  of  which, 
however,  I  have  had  prelibations  for  many 
years.  It  was  strange  to  see  the  thick 
crimson  blood  pouring  from  one's  own 
mouth  while  feeling  hardly  any  pain  ;  ex 
pecting  to  be  dead  in  five  minutes,  and 
noticing  the  pattern  of  the  room-paper 
and  of  the  Doctor's  waistcoat  as  compos 
edly  as  if  the  whole  had  been  a  dream. 

At  present  I  am  quite  incapable,  as 
indeed  I  was  when  I  wrote  last,  of  send 
ing  you  anything  worth  your  reading. 

On  both  sides  of  Eternity  (the  out 
and  in), 

Your  affectionate 

JOHN  STERLING. 

XIX.    EMERSON   TO  STERLING. 

CONCORD,  ^th  July,  1844. 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  What  news  you 
send  me,  —  how  dark  and  bitter,  and  how 
8? 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

unlocked  for,  and  so  firmly  and  soldierly 
told !  I  got  your  letter  yesterday,  and  in 
it  the  first  hint  I  have  had  of  this  disaster. 
I  dream  of  you  and  of  Carlyle,  whenever 
steamers  go  or  come,  but  easily  omit  to 
write ;  and  this  is  the  punishment  of  my 
luxury,  that  you  should  be  threatened, 
and  I  should  know  nothing  of  your  dan 
ger  and  mine.  I  cling  now  to  the  hope 
you  show  me  that  these  symptoms  may 
not  be  so  grave  or  of  so  instant  sequel  as 
their  first  menace.  Yesterday  I  thought 
I  would  go  to  England,  and  see  you  alive ; 
it  seemed  practicable  and  right.  But  the 
same  hour  showed  inextricable  engage 
ments  here  at  home,  and  I  could  not  see 
your  manly  strength,  which  is  so  dear  to 
me,  and  I  might  easily  make  injurious  de 
mands  on  a  sick  man.  You  are  so  brave 
you  must  be  brave  for  both  of  us,  and 
suffer  me  to  express  the  pain  I  feel  at 
these  first  tidings.  I  shall  come  soon 
enough  to  general  considerations  which 
will  weigh  with  you,  and  with  me,  I  sup- 
88 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

pose,  to  reduce  this  calamity  within  the 
sphere.  I,  who  value  nothing  so  much 
as  character  in  literary  works,  have  be 
lieved  that  you  would  live  to  enjoy  the 
slow,  sure  homage  of  your  contempora 
ries  to  the  valor  and  permanent  merits  of 
your  Muse ;  and  I  have  pleased  myself 
how  deeply  with  a  certain  noble  emula 
tion  in  which  widely  separated  friends 
would  bear  each  other  in  constant  regard, 
and  with  months  and  years  augment  the 
benefit  each  had  to  confer.  This  must 
now  be  renounced,  and  the  grand  words  I 
hear  and  sometimes  use  must  be  verified, 
and  I  must  think  of  that  which  you  re 
present,  and  not  of  the  representative 
beloved.  Happy  is  it  whilst  the  Blessed 
Power  keeps  unbroken  the  harmony  of 
the  inward  and  the  outward,  and  yields 
us  the  perfect  expression  of  good  in  a 
friend !  But  if  it  will  disunite  the  power 
and  the  form,  the  power  is  yet  to  be  in 
finitely  trusted,  and  we  must  try,  unwill 
ing,  the  harsh  grandeurs  of  the  spiritual 
89 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

nature.  Each  of  us  more  readily  faces 
the  issue  alone  than  on  the  account  of 
his  friend.  We  find  something  dishonest 
in  learning  to  live  without  friends  :  whilst 
death  wears  a  sublime  aspect  to  each  of 
us.  God  send  you,  my  dear  brother,  the 
perfect  mind  of  truth  and  heart  of  love, 
however  the  event  is  to  fall !  Thousands 
of  hearts  have  owed  to  you  the  finest 
mystic  influences :  I  must  and  will  believe 
in  happy  reactions  which  will  render  to 
you  the  most  soothing  music  at  unawares. 

If  you  have  strength,  write  me,  if  only 
your  name.  But  I  shall  continue  to  hope 
to  see  your  face.  And  so  I  love  you  and 
I  thank  you,  dear  Friend  ! 

Yours,  R.  WALDO  EMERSON. 

XX.    STERLING   TO   EMERSON. 

HILLSIDE,  VENTNOR,  August  ist,  1844. 

MY  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  I  am  very  ill  to 
day,   but,  as   I   am   likely  to   be  worse 
rather  than  better,  I  make  the  effort  of 
90 


THE   CORRESPONDENCE 

writing  a  few  words  to  thank  you  for 
your  letter,  and  also  for  your  care  about 
my  papers. 

You  and  I  will  never  meet  in  this 
world.  Among  my  friends  you  are  an 
Unseen  One,  but  not  the  less  valued. 
Heaven  help  you  to  realize  all  your  in 
spirations.  They  will  be  a  blessing  to 
many  as  well  as  yourself.  My  struggle, 
I  trust,  is  nigh  over.  At  present  it  is  a 
painful  one.  But  I  fear  nothing,  and 
hope  much. 

Your  affectionate  and  grateful 

JOHN  STERLING. 


CONCLUSION 

IN  the  last  days  of  September  Carlyle 
wrote  to  tell  Emerson  of  the  death  of 
their  friend  ;  how  calm  he  had  been,  and 
brave,  and  how  to  the  very  last  he  worked 
alone,  setting  his  house  in  order  and 
sending  farewells  to  his  friends,  whom 
he  preferred  not  to  see.  He  tells  how 
Sterling's  brother,  arriving  after  a  short 
absence  on  the  last  evening  of  his  life, 
"found  no  visible  change,  the  brave  Pa 
tient  calm  as  ever,  ready  to  speak  as 
ever,  —  to  say,  in  direct  words  which  he 
would  often  do,  or  indirectly  as  his  whole 
speech  and  conduct  did,  '  God  is  Great.' 
Anthony  and  he  talked  for  a  while,  then 
took  leave  for  the  night ;  in  a  few  min 
utes  more,  Anthony  was  summoned  to 
the  bedside,  and  at  eleven  o'clock,  as  I 
92 


CONCLUSION 

said,  the   curtain  dropt,  and   it  was  all 
ended.  —  Enge  ! 

"  Our  Friend  is  buried  in  Ventnor 
Churchyard;  four  big  Elms  overshadow 
the  little  spot  ;  it  is  situated  on  the 
southeast  side  of  that  green  Island,  on 
the  slope  of  steep  hills  (as  I  understand 
it)  that  look  toward  the  Sun,  and  are 
close  within  sight  and  hearing  of  the 
Sea.  There  shall  he  rest,  and  have  fit 
lullaby,  this  brave  one.  He  has  died  as 
a  man  should  ;  like  an  old  Roman,  yet 
with  the  Christian  Bibles  and  all  newest 
revelations  present  to  him.  He  refused 
to  see  friends,  men  whom  I  think  he 
loved  as  well  as  any,  —  me  for  one  when 
I  obliquely  proposed  it,  he  refused.  He 
was  even  a  little  stern  on  his  nearest  re 
latives  when  they  came  to  him  :  Do  I 
need  your  help  to  die  ?  Phocion-like  he 
seemed  to  feel  degraded  by  physical  de 
cay  ;  to  feel  that  he  ought  to  wrap  his 
93 


CONCLUSION 

mantle  round  him,  and  say,  '  I  come,  Per- 
sephoneia ;  it  is  not  I  that  linger ! ' ' 

In  the  answering  letter,  written  from 
Concord  on  the  last  day  of  the  year, 
Emerson  said :  — 

"  Your  two  letters  containing  tidings, 
the  first  of  the  mortal  illness,  and  the 
second  of  the  death  of  Sterling,  I  had  no 
heart  to  answer.  I  had  nothing  to  say. 
Alas  !  as  in  so  many  instances  hereto 
fore,  I  knew  not  what  to  think.  Life  is 
somewhat  customary  and  useful  ;  and 
death  is  the  unusual  and  astonishing  ;  it 
kills  in  so  far  the  survivor  also,  when 
it  ravishes  from  him  friendship  and 
the  most  noble  and  admirable  qualities. 
That  which  we  call  faith  seems  some 
what  stoical  and  selfish,  if  we  use  it  as 
a  retreat  from  the  pangs  this  ravishment 
inflicts.  I  had  never  seen  him,  but  I 
held  him  fast ;  now  I  see  him  not,  but  I 
can  no  longer  hold  him.  Who  can  say 
what  he  yet  is  and  will  be  to  me  ?  " 
94 


CONCLUSION 

Carlyle's  verdict  on  his  friend's  life,  in 
his  "Memoir,"  is  that  it  was  "a  tragedy; 
high  hopes,  noble  efforts  ;  under  thick 
ening  difficulties  and  impediments,  ever 
new  nobleness  of  valiant  effort ;  and  the 
result  death  with  conquests  by  no  means 
corresponding."  But  even  while  he  is 
writing  this  dismal  summary,  the  beauty 
and  help  that  this  short  life  had  for  those 
who  saw  and  felt  it,  and  for  those  who 
should  later  consider  it,  sweeps  over  him, 
and,  the  human  heart  breaking  through 
the  crust,  he  admits  its  claim,  and  more, 
the  call  of  Nature,  and  thus  ends  :  — 

"  The  history  of  this  long-continued 
prayer  and  endeavour,  lasting  in  various 
figures  for  near  forty  years,  may  now  and 
for  some  time  coming  have  something  to 
say  to  men ! 

"  Nay,  what  of  men,  or  of  the  world  ? 
Here,  visible  to  myself  for  some  while, 
was  a  brilliant  human  presence,  distin 
guishable,  honourable  and  lovable  amid 
95 


CONCLUSION 

the  dim,  common  populations ;  among 
the  million  little  beautiful,  once  more  a 
beautiful  human  soul,  whom  I,  among 
others,  recognized  and  lovingly  walked 
with,  while  the  years  and  the  hours  were. 
Sitting  now  by  his  tomb  in  thoughtful 
mood,  the  new  times  bring  a  new  duty 
for  me.  *  Why  write  a  Life  of  Sterling  ? ' 
I  imagine  I  had  a  commission  higher 
than  the  world's,  —  the  dictate  of  Nature 
herself,  to  do  what  is  now  done.  Sic 
prosit'' 


Cte  fltoerjtfbe 

CAMBRIDGE,  MASSACHUSETTS,  U.  S. 
ELECTROTYPED  AND  PRINTED  BY 
H.  O.  HOUGHTON  AND  CO. 


